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Adèle Haenel, star of this year’s festival favorite “Portrait of a Lady on Fire,” has publicly accused “The Devils” director Christophe Ruggia of sexual harassment. Details first emerged in the Paris-based journal Mediapart, before being reported by Deadline.

Haenel alleges that Ruggia made advances on her after she was cast in his 2002 drama “The Devils” beginning at the age of 12, and that the harassment continued until she was 15 years old. According to the French report, Haenel does not intend to pursue legal action, stating that she thinks “justice ignores” voices such as hers.

In response to the piece, Ruggia sent a missive to Mediapart via his legal team categorically refuting any harassment or misconduct, and said that he and Haenel maintained a “professional and affectionate relationship” while calling the report “slanderous.”

Haenel says that the incidents unfolded between 2001 and 2004, and when the director was 36 years old through 39. The misconduct...

Viewers obsessive about spoiler alerts will be thwarted by the very title of “Fire Will Come”: You know exactly what climax is coming in Oliver Laxe’s rustically beautiful rural parable, but its dreamy, mesmeric power lies in the waiting. An exactingly paced slow burn before it becomes, well, a very fast one, this second feature from the Franco-Spanish filmmaker confirms all the poised formal promise of “You Are All Captains” and “Mimosas,” while bringing greater depth and generosity of human observation to his rich, abundant mood-harvesting. Following the daily travails of a convicted pyromaniac as he attempts to resettle in his family farmstead, “Fire Will Come” may have limited commercial potential, but its appearance in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard sidebar — where it deservedly won the runner-up Jury Prize, following the 2016 Critics’ Week triumph of “Mimosas” — represents another step toward major auteur status for its unobtrusively gifted helmer.

Though...