In the wake of #MeToo, TV networks, streaming services, and film studios in Hollywood began implementing safeguards to ensure that actors were not subject to sexual harassment or violence. TV and film producers hired “intimacy coordinators” to help make sure that scenes with nudity or sex were entirely consensual. SAG-AFTRA codified the job and describes the role as that of “an advocate, a liaison between actors and production.”
The French, meanwhile, scoffed. From afar, they dismissed the practice as yet another example of Anglo-Saxon prudishness. To the French way of thinking, cinema is an art form—one that they pioneered—and directors are artistes who must be entirely free to express themselves, without interference or limitation.
