French actor Gérard Depardieu's defense team is "trying at all costs, at all times, to delay and slow down the judicial process," laments Carine Durrieu-Diebolt, the lawyer for one of the two complainants accusing the actor of sexual assault, at the end of the first day of hearings at the Paris Criminal Court. Depardieu, 76, who has acted in more than 200 films and television series, has been accused of improper behaviour by around 20 women but this is the first case to come to trial. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES