A judge has sided with Netflix in a legal battle launched by a famous diver who claims a movie inspired by his life falsely accused him of murder.
Judge Bruce G. Iwasaki granted Netflix’s request to dismiss the case on Tuesday, finding that diver Pippin Ferreras could not prove the fictional film was about him.
“No Limit” was released on Netflix in September 2022. It tells a story “inspired by real events” about a couple, Pascal Gauthier and Roxanne Aubry, who take up freediving, diving to extreme depths without an oxygen supply. Roxanne dies in a record attempt, with the clear implication that Pascal sabotaged her equipment.
Ferreras filed a defamation lawsuit last year, claiming the film was an accusation that he killed his wife. Audrey Mestre drowned while freediving in 2002. Ferreras, who led the dive, has since faced strong criticism over his safety practices.
Ferreras is never mentioned in the film, which includes the standard disclaimer that it is fiction and that “any resemblance to reality is coincidental.” However, the film ends with a tribute to Mestre, showing a title card with her photo and a single sentence about her death.
Netflix filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit in November, arguing that while the film was inspired in part by Mestre’s story, it wasn’t meant to be a literal account of her death.
Writer-director David M. Rosenthal said in a court filing that he learned of Mestre’s story by watching an ESPN documentary; he then read more articles and books about the case. But Rosenthal said he was also inspired by “Le Grand Bleu,” a 1988 film about rival freedivers directed by Luc Besson, as well as movies and novels depicting dangerous romantic relationships.
“The film wasn’t intended to portray a specific person, but rather explored my ideas about how a particularly toxic relationship can develop in a uniquely high-pressure environment like the world of unrestricted freediving,” Rosenthal wrote.
Rosenthal said that, like everyone else, he does not know the true cause of Mestre’s death and does not intend to get involved in this dispute. He said he included the tribute to Mestre to honor her, but not to indicate that the film chronicles her life.
He also claimed that the film’s ending is “deliberately ambiguous” as the viewer is left to decide whether or not Pascal killed Roxanne.
“The drama created by uncertainty is far greater than any drama created by an obvious villain,” he wrote.
The judge disagreed, finding that there was no ambiguity as to whether Pascal’s character was at fault. But Iwazaki also believed that Pascal was not the real Ferreras—and that therefore the film was not defamatory.
“No reasonable viewer would have determined that the film depicted the plaintiff,” the judge wrote.
Iwazaki wrote that many of the parallels between the film and Ferreras’ life story would be common to any freediving film. And he found significant differences, noting that the abusive and controlling relationship depicted in the film did not resemble Ferreras’ description of a harmonious marriage.
Ferreras’ attorney, Alexander Rufus-Isaac, said he would appeal. He claims there are 22 similarities between the fictional portrait and the true story, making it abundantly clear that the film is about his client.
“I think this is one of the most serious cases of defamation in fiction that I have come across,” he said.
Rufus-Isaacs is also suing Netflix on behalf of real-life figures featured in “Inventing Anna” and “The Queen’s Gambit.”
