Welcome to New-York: Gerard Depardieu plays Dominique Strauss-Kahn in new film depicting former IMF chief
Gerard Depardieu plays Dominique Strauss-Kahn in a new film depicting the former International Monetary Fund chief as a s**-crazed playboy, haunting or**es and chasing young women – despite the objections of his wife.
A trailer, leaked online and posted by several websites, appears to be a film festival sales pitch controversial Welcome to NY movie starring Gerard Depardieu.
Gerard Depardieu plays a “Mr. Deveraux” – modeled after powerful French politician DSK, who was once a front-runner to become the president of France.
The trailer offers several scenes of Gerard Depardieu’s character engaging in or**es, having s** with prostitutes and seducing young women.
All the while his wife, played by Jaqueline Bisset, struggles to cope with her husband’s infidelities.
The trailer opens with director Abel Ferrara’s recreation of the alleged s** assault that brought down the mighty DSK and led to his arrest in May 2011.
A woman behind a closed door screams and struggles, shouting: “No! No!”
DSK was dramatically taken off a plane and handcuffed after a maid at the upscale Sofitel New York Hotel accused him forcing her to give him o**l s**.
The charges were later dropped due to inconsistencies in the maid’s story to police, but the incident led to other accusations about DSK s****l predilections that sank his political career.
The film remains controversial because the s** assault charges were never proven and prosecutors determined that they did not have enough evidence to prosecute him.
That didn’t stop Abel Ferrara from imaging his own scenario for the incident at the hotel. The final scene of the trailer shows Gerard Depardieu’s character wrapped in a bath towel, fresh out of the shower, when the maid approaches.
The maid looks intimidated as the man asks: “Do you know who I am?”
In an interview with Swiss Television RTS last year, Gerard Depardieu revealed he agreed to play the part because he found his fellow countryman “arrogant and smug”, adding: “He is very French. I will do it, because I don’t like him.”
Gerard Depardieu, 64, will be joined on screen by Nip/Truck actress Jacqueline Bisset, 68, who will play DSK’s ex-wife, the French TV reporter Anne Sinclair.
Gerard Depardieu plays DSK in new film Welcome to New-York depicting the former IMF chief
And last month, the actors got caught in controlled chaos as they re-enacted the media storm surrounding the s****l assault trial, that ultimately collapsed in August 2011.
The scene depicted the media frenzy surrounding the case that was sparked when an immigrant hotel maid accused the then-IMF chief of s****l assault after she entered his suite to clean it.
It was filmed outside the same 6,800-square-foot, $50,000-a-month Tribeca townhouse that DSK stayed in while under house arrest as the case unfolded.
But the trial collapsed in August 2011 when prosecutors deemed the evidence of his accuser, Nafissatou Diallo, to be unreliable. She later filed a civil lawsuit.
The film is being directed by American Abel Ferrara, whose credits include Bad Lieutenant, which starred Billy-Bob Thornton in 1992 and 1996 crime thriller The Funeral, fronted by Christopher Walken.
Announcing his latest venture last year, Abel Ferrara said it would be set in New York, Paris and Washington, adding: “[It will be set] in all spots of power in fact: it’s a film about rich and powerful people.”
Gerard Depardieu himself is no stranger to the courts.
Earlier this month, Gerard Depardieu missed a hearing in Paris over an alleged drunken scooter incident.
Gerard Depardieu, who also failed to attend court for the last hearing in January, was more than three times over the drink-drive limit when he came off his moped near the Champs-Elysees in Paris last November.
He had been due to attend a “correctional tribunal” in Paris to face a charge of drink-driving, but he did not turn up because he was filming his new role as Dominique Strauss-Kahn in New York.
A judge said the case would go ahead in Gerard Depardieu’s absence, and the Oscar-nominated star of Green Card and Cyrano de Bergerac risked being sentenced to a maximum of two years behind bars and a 4,500 euro fine.
Two years ago, Gerard Depardieu was also arrested for smashing up a car parked outside a swingers’ club near his Paris home.
And he was involved in a separate scandal in France in 2011 when he urinated in the aisle of a plane in full view of disgusted passengers.
Gerard Depardieu also courted controversy in his native France this year after moving to Belgium and taking Russian citizenship to avoid a new 75% tax rate.
When Gerard Depardieu announced his plans to move abroad to avoid paying high tax rates, he was branded “shabby and unpatriotic” by PM Jean-Marc Ayrault.
But the defiant screen legend retaliated by declaring he would also hand back his French passport, and wrote an angry open letter to the French government, saying: “All those who have left France have not been insulted as I have been.”
He then told French president Francois Hollande in a personal phone call that he was “sickened at how France spits on success”.
Gerard Depardieu is one of the few French stars known throughout the world, and has made more than 100 films, many in English.
He also notorious in France for his battle with alcohol and his turbulent love life.
Over the past ten years Gerard Depardieu has devoted much of his time to producing wine at his Lys-de-Volan vineyard near Lyon.