By the Grace of God (Grâce à Dieu)

French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin (right) was found guilty of covering up child sexual abuse by a priest in his diocese 

French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin

Cardinal Philippe Barbarin pictured with Pope Francis earlier this year in March, 2019

Director François Ozon

(From left) Melvil Poupaud, director François Ozon, and Bernard Verley on the set of By the Grace of God

Director François Ozon (left) and actor Francois Marthouret on the set 

Ozon (left) and actor Melvil Poupard

BY THE GRACE OF GOD (Grâce à Dieu)                         B                    

France  Belgium  (135 mi)  2019  d: François Ozon 

A mischievous, openly gay filmmaker known for his eclectic styles, with a flair for misdirection and exaggerated melodramas, playful sexual comedies, identity issues, and an outright contempt for bourgeois families, Ozon displays a tendency to integrate fantasy sequences which are indistinguishable from reality, which leave the viewer guessing what really happened, leaving his films open to interpretation.  While he may have been more experimental early in his career, he’s always maintained an enfant terrible status by being an agent provocateur, never afraid of tackling taboo subjects and broadsiding the public, provoking the masses with satiric stabs at whatever is deemed politically correct.  Yet Ozon has become the new mainstream, suddenly elevated to a new respectability as a longstanding gay filmmaker who has been unashamedly bold in challenging stereotypical views on gay and straight relationships, offering subversive alternatives for decades as the maker of Potiche (2010), In the House (Dans La Maison) (2012), Young & Beautiful (Jeune & Jolie) (2013), The New Girlfriend (Une nouvelle amie) (2014), or Frantz (2016).  Having viewed nearly all of his feature films, this is easily his most mainstream and conventional effort, yet with good reason, dramatizing real-world events, where the story presented has not yet resolved itself, taken straight from the newspaper headlines, basically the French version of the American film Spotlight (2015), highlighting pedophilia sex abuse accusations by a Catholic priest, the real-life Father Bernard Preynat (Bernard Verley), while also addressing the role of real-life Cardinal Philippe Barbarin of Lyon (François Marthouret) who is accused of concealing the priest’s conduct for decades, often reassigning him to other churches, yet he still managed to retain his status as a priest performing his church duties in the presence of unsuspecting children, all told from the point of view of several of the adult survivors who are aghast that this is still happening long after their traumatic childhood experiences.  While there were attempts to prevent the film’s release at the Berlin Film Festival in February 2019, where it won a Silver Bear (2nd place) Grand Prize Award, the court ruled that the accused priest had already pleaded guilty, though the Cardinal’s case is still playing out in the courts. 

While Ozon makes films like a short story writer, as most are unusually concise, usually written by himself, offering bizarre twists, venturing into farce, horror, comedy, or the psychosexual, even the supernatural, where some of his best work has involved psychologically probing films about women, UNDER THE SAND (2000), 8 WOMEN (2002), SWIMMING POOL (2003), or ANGEL (2007), much like Almodóvar, making only one film that similarly explores the male psyche, TIME TO LEAVE (2005), featuring Melvil Poupard as a man facing his own mortality, suffering from a terminal illness.  Poupard returns again here as a heavily conflicted man who set the wheels in motion, Alexandre Guérin, now in his 40’s, living a comfortable life in Lyon, married with five children, coming from the respectable middle class, with a prestigious position in the banking industry, yet he is appalled to see Father Bernard Preynat, the same priest he believed was tried, convicted, and defrocked for sexually abusing him from the ages of 9 to 12 when he attended Catholic Scout Camp, is still actively teaching children in Lyon, fully sanctioned by the church and protected by Cardinal Philippe Barbarin.  As his own children are approaching adolescence, wanting to protect them, he starts a series of targeted letters to the church which are read out loud, as well as the responses, starting with the Cardinal, who refers him to a church psychologist, Régine Maire (Martine Erhel), who acts as a go-between for Alexandre, Preynat, and the Cardinal of Lyon, who eventually arranges a face to face meeting with the accused priest.  And while Preynat openly admits his crimes, he refuses to do so publicly, and more curiously, fails to ask for forgiveness, which was the underlying church motive for arranging the meeting.  Having spent years overcoming the psychological damage, now with the full support of his wife Marie (Aurélia Petit), Alexandre openly shares what happened with his children, still embracing the teachings of the church, hoping his example will help teach his children not to remain silent in the face of criminal behavior.  His own parents, however, wonder why he’s bringing this up all over again, thinking nothing good will come of it, fearing they will be socially ostracized from the church in a predominately Catholic country. 

Much of this happened before the Cardinal obtained his position, professing outrage at the heinously sinful acts, promising to rectify all wrongs, yet he does nothing, sweeping it all under a rug, where throughout the centuries the church has never supported the victims, yet always managed to protect the priests, claiming their central concern has always been to maintain the central religious tenets of the church, yet their moral hypocrisy on this issue is hugely disconcerting.  The church, however, seems to be changing its stance on the scourge of pedophilia and the silence hanging over it, with Pope Francis calling it “one of the most vile and harmful crimes” in existence.  Ozon based his story on several members of the survivors’ group, La Parole Liberée, which has collected the testimonies of more than 85 people who claim to have been abused by Preynat in Lyon.  The film breaks it down to three different men, each one attending the same Catholic Scout Camp, where over the years Preynat had his pickings of whatever child interested him, singling them out, then retreating into private quarters separate and apart from the rest of the campers, but this behavior is consistent throughout his priesthood.  Flashback sequences are sparingly used to accentuate not just how it happened, but includes the looks on the faces of all the other kids who sat silently and watched, ultimately telling no one.  When shooting for the film began, it was shot in secrecy, using an alternate title, including church facilities in Belgium to avoid arousing the suspicions of the French Catholic church.  Initially Ozon thought to shoot a documentary, but found the actual stories told by survivors to be so compelling that he decided to condense them all into three different men in one film.  The film itself is surprisingly evenhanded, shown with a sense of restraint and control, more sobering than angry, using meticulously researched detail for the actual chain of events, yet the overall performances are exceptional, not just emotionally revealing, featuring characters eerily haunted by the damaging circumstances.  

The story moves to François Debord, an outspoken atheist, played by the highly assertive Denis Ménochet, so menacing as the abusive father in 2017 Top Ten List #7 Custody (Jusqu'à la garde), who starts a website and begins publicizing stories, forming a victims support group, eventually passing the baton to Emmanuel Thomassin (Swann Arlaud), easily the most damaged of the group, fighting drug addiction, joblessness, and the life of an outsider, with a near genius IQ, where bad news triggers epileptic seizures, where in his case the abuse was so pervasive it left him permanently disfigured, never really accepted anywhere until he discovers the support group.  Among the underlying layers expressed in the film are the toxic family reactions, haunted by the shame, often blaming the victim, with Emmanuel’s father cruelly telling him to just get over it, or a nasty scene between François and his brother, claiming all the attention led to a kind of favored status of the victim, jealous that his own childhood had been ruined by the revelations, still believing his brother is obsessed with seeking attention.  These incidents remind viewers of the kind of personal attacks that come with lifting the burden of silence, as powerful forces exist that continue to believe the less said the better.  For the victims, however, initially feeling so powerless, all eventually finding each other, where they’re no longer alone with their shame, each one sharing the same horrible secret that seemed to eat away at their lives, always carrying a heavy burden which hasn’t exactly been lifted off their shoulders, but at least there’s more of them to carry that weight.  The title comes from a 2016 press conference with Cardinal Barbarin who acknowledged that “the majority of cases, by the grace of God, are inadmissible,” as the statute of limitations had expired to file criminal charges against Preynat, inadvertently revealing a sigh of relief, thinking only of the church and not about the victims.  The public furor over the events changed the laws in France, extending the time limits on the statute of limitations.  Father Preynat, now 73, was found guilty of sex abuse to dozens of minors in the 70’s and 80’s, stripped of his position and defrocked by an ecclesiastical court, while Cardinal Barbarin was handed a six-month suspended sentence for not having removed Preynat from his parish despite repeated reports of misconduct, temporarily replaced until the appeal process has run its course. 

Just a Sigh (Le temps de l'aventure)

JUST A SIGH (Le temps de l'aventure)        B    
France  Belgium  Ireland  (105 mi)  2013  d:  Jérôme Bonnell

This is the kind of film that is stereotypically French, where one comes to assume that one of the favorite film subjects of the French is adultery and illicit love affairs, where this could just as easily have been called Love In the Afternoon, but both Billy Wilder (1957) and Eric Rohmer (1972) already nabbed that title.  Who knows where this sappy American title comes from, as the French version, The Time of the Adventure, has much more of a mysterious sounding allure.  Claire Denis’s FRIDAY NIGHT (2002), another variation on the same theme, gets directly to the point and may be considered a groundbreaking work, but this film about a sexual liason plays out more like an afternoon reverie, a daydream of wish fulfillment fantasy, where the kind of thing that never happens, by a strange act of fate, actually happens, with two strangers whose eyes meet on a train, always averting their looks, who speak just for a brief moment afterwards, only asking for directions, and then part, presumably fading into one of many forgotten moments in the course of any given day.  Written with actress Emmanuelle Devos in mind, she is in nearly every shot of the film and offers a tour-de-force performance, showing a great range of expression, much freer, more vulnerable, and funnier than we’re used to seeing her, where she’s the risk taker.  The object of her gaze is Gabriel Byrne, an Englishman whose name she never learns until the end, but his face remains a fixture in her imagination before running off to a rather wretched audition that leaves her feeling empty and dissatisfied with herself.  Having taken the early morning train from Calais to Paris, she’s expected back for an evening performance of Ibsen’s Lady from the Sea, where we see her walk onto the stage, but never see her perform in a play about having to choose between two men, which is essentially what this film is about as well, playing what amounts to a variation on a similar theme.     

The film has an exquisite classical structure, making great use of the music of Vivaldi and occasional sacred chorales from Verdi, which becomes equated with unspoken states of mind.  Devos plays Alix as a still attractive middle-aged woman continually frustrated at being unable to connect to her boyfriend’s cell phone, which is aways forwarded to voicemail, and with the pent-up energy from the disastrous audition, remains restless, and curiously wanders over to the location of the earlier overheard directions, which turns out to be a church where a funeral is taking place, where she easily blends into the crowd and discovers the face she saw on the train suddenly staring back at her with an astonishing look.  After the service, people gravitate to a nearby bar, where Alix has become the ear to nonstop chatter about the deceased from one of the well wishers (Gilles Privat), growing absurdly humorous as she has to continually pretend how well she knew the deceased, finally taking refuge on the sidewalk where she joins the handsome Englishman for a cigarette.  While there are multiple opportunities for each to go their separate ways, Alix is seen dawdling in front of his hotel, which, of course leads them both to take the plunge, becoming a sophisticated affair, where the bedroom conversation is quietly honest and unpretentious, but not without moments of humor, such as when Alix acts out what she does for a living.  While he is married with children, Alix remains unable to reach her boyfriend, continuing her feeling of disconnect.  Rather than immediately take the train back afterwards, she decides to visit her wealthy sister (Aurélia Petit), living in a lavish estate behind a locked iron gate, who presumes she’s there to borrow money, which she is, as her bank card failed at a cash machine.  This family visit turns into a full blown farce when the tone grows more and more condescending, eventually inspiring competitive jealousy and scene stealing theatrics from her sister that earns a bravado from Alix, as the scene was so spectacularly overplayed.  Afterwards, of course, she drifts back to the hotel.

Many will find this kind of rhapsodic adventure to be romantic, others might think it stereotypical, but it certainly becomes all too predictable after awhile, as the same theme is repeated throughout.  Much like Richard Linklater’s bustling romantic trilogy, Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004), and Before Midnight (2013), the couple walks hand in hand through the streets of Paris where an international music festival is taking place, all of which adds kinetic energy and an immersion into a kind of unreal landscape, suddenly overflowing with party revelers all celebrating some mysterious event, which may as well be this romantic affair, becoming melodramatically overblown in order to sustain the level of interest throughout.  For all practical purposes, this remains Alix’s story and her adventure, where much like FRIDAY NIGHT (Vendredi Soir), it’s the portrait of a female protagonist who enters into an affair guilt free, as an act of personal liberation, a temporary means to rise above what feels like a stifling relationship with her own boyfriend (who we never see, but only hear on the phone).  Alix allows herself sexual expression as circumstances permit, as she never set out to seduce anyone, but allows herself to become involved in a kind of play acting, like a continuation of her morning audition, hoping to improve upon her performance.  In this way, instead of a typically male oriented fantasy, whatever erotic charge is what she puts into the moment, and Devos is wonderfully off balance throughout, providing a flair for lighthearted spontaneity and personal warmth, not to mention a healthy degree of curiosity, becoming as much about herself as whatever it is she hopes to discover.  It certainly rekindles a kind of passion that has been kept in reserve all too long, where the question becomes what does she intend to do with it, and with whom?  Perhaps due to language barriers, their dialogue throughout is in English, which is unusual to say the least in a French film, and may actually be a distraction, losing a degree of naturalness in her character.  Much of the overall experience is wordless, relying upon shifting atmospheric moods, where the film has an elegance about it, but feels strangely somber, never delving very deeply into either one’s character, knowing next to nothing about one another, which is perhaps the point, but then it never rises to a level of great heights and remains only a fantasy.