Support for Gérard Depardieu comes from the France that is obsessed with its image and stuck in the past | Elsa Court

For many, he represents the nation's cultural presence. But he is also a cause celebre for those frightened by #MeToo and progressive change

I remember the moment my Scottish flatmate showed me a clip of Gerard Depardieu in Le Camion by Marguerite Duras from 1977, proof of his youthful attractiveness. As a woman born in France in the 1980s, my recent memory pictured him as a more imposing figure, someone prone to debordements in the sense of excess - a national treasure: a symbol of a certain Rabelaisian laisser-aller, an overindulgence of man's appetites.

I won't lie and say that the latest Depardieu controversy - the accusations of past rape and sexual assault - came as a shock in my parents' home north of Paris, where I am spending the quiet days between Christmas and new year.

Elsa Court is a lecturer in French at the University of Oxford

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