Fighting against “the Tunnel of the 50-year-old actress”

Image credit: “Tapie”, directed by Olivier Demangel Tristan Séguéla, produced by Netflix, 2023

Written by: Alexandre Moussa

Really, this is still happening in 2023? In the last few days, criticism has emerged in the press and on social media against Netflix’s Tapie series, a biopic dedicated to controversial businessman Bernard Tapie’s career. While the performance of Comédie-Française member Laurent Lafitte has been praised in the title role, the casting of 29 year-old actress Joséphine Japy for the part of Tapie’s wife Dominique raised many eyebrows. While Dominique Tapie was only 7 years younger than her husband, a 21 year gap separates Japy and her partner on screen, who has just turned 50. ‘Was every French actress above 40 unavailable at the time or do they simply all suck?’, ironically wonders journalist and writer Fiona Schmidt, author of the recent essay Vieille peau (Old Hag) on her Instagram page.

The difficulty for French actresses to find meaty parts as they grow older has been a topic of concern in France since at least 2015, when a special commission within the professional organization for actors AAFA (Actrices et Acteurs de France associés) was founded by Marina Tomé to fight against “the Tunnel of the 50-year-old actress”. For seven years, the commission has been raising awareness on the topic through many ways, taking cues from the actions of the Geena Davis Institute, who counts as one of their international supports. One of their streategies is to make the disparity visible. Since 2016, the AAFA-Tunnel de la comédienne de 50 ans has been gathering yearly data on parts attributed to ageing actors and actresses, with the purpose of “counting in order to count”. Their statistics have for instance shown that French actresses lend in average half as many roles as their male counterparts after they reach 50. According to the commission’s numbers, women older than 50 make for 1 out of 13 adult characters in French films released in 2021 while they represent 1 adult out of 4 in real life.

In order to address this issue and foster change, the commission has meanwhile taken many public initiatives. They have for instance encouraged research on gender and ageing, taking part to several research seminars on the topic and collaborating with many scholars such as Mathieu Arbogast, Raphaëlle Doyon, Thierry Delcourt, Marie Grenon, Juliette Rennes or Geneviève Sellier. But they have also worked hard to reach directly professionals within the industry: they have for instance organized a conference on the “strange and fabulous destiny of the 50-year-old female character” and planned seminars with members of other professional organizations (screenwriters, directors, casting directors, agents and producers). They have also tried to raise media attention and reach mainstream audiences by publishing a manifesto in Le Monde, giving frequent interviews to the pressand curating videos for social media. Finally, they have lobbied for the National Center for Cinema (CNC) to taking into account the issue of age in its 2019 study on “The place of women in the film industry” and have been meeting with political leaders in order to alert them on the double standard of ageing.

While their concern for raising awareness on the topic of ageing has been nothing less than serious, the commission has often found playful ways to accomplish its mission. For instance, during the last Cannes Film Festival, the commission created a survey inspired by the Bechdel-Wallace test. During the festival, moviegoers were incited to answer three questions about the films they saw. Is there at least a female character older than 50 identified by a name or a first name? Does she speak in more than two scenes? Besides her function within the family unit (as a wife, mother, grandmother), does she have any social involvement or professional activity? The results are yet to be published, but should prove interesting. The Tapie controversy is yet another reminder that there is still a lot to be done in order to give ageing women on screen the place they deserve.

To know more about the work of the AAFA-Tunnel de la comédienne de 50 ans commission, click here.

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