The Innocent (L'innocent)

Actor/director Louis Garrel

Garrel with Roschdy Zem and Jean-Claude Pautot

Jean-Claude Pautot

Noémie Merlant and Louis Garrel

THE INNOCENT (L'innocent)          B                                                                                     France  (99 mi)  2022  ‘Scope  d: Louis Garrel

An offbeat comedy caper that is more of a character study, while also veering into freewheeling family dysfunction and a heist drama, adapting the director’s own screenplay of mixed genres, co-written by French crime novelist Tanguy Viel and screenwriter Naïla Guiguet, the first without the helping hand of iconic French novelist/screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriére, a longtime collaborator with Luis Buñuel, where all four of Garrel’s films feature him playing an alter-ego character named Abel, a somewhat bumbling Antoine Doinel figure who offers an existential window into contemporary times, though there is no apparent link between films.  The absurd, outlandish nature borders on farce, while it also plays into a crime thriller genre, with the director apparently having fun at his own expense, playing an overly morose character who rarely smiles and is a pain in the ass most of the time, allowing the other characters to shine.  Placing himself as the weakest link in a superb cast that simply runs circles around him talent wise is an interesting choice, and takes guts to do that, but it leaves the center of the picture somewhat deflated by the blind, short-sidedness of Abel (Louis Garrel), who’s a bit of a jerk, with the audience quickly losing patience with him, exhibiting little sympathy for just how obnoxious he really is.  The other surprise is the use of such cheesy, synthesized music, Gianna Nannini - I maschi (1988) HD 0815007 - YouTube (5:57) or Craig Armstrong: Let's go out tonight YouTube (6:01), a throwback to films of the 70’s and 80’s, with the inclusion of fades to black, split screen, and iris shots, yet the generic sound lacks any real inspiration, feeling like a lost opportunity.  So there’s a lot not to like in this film.  On the other hand, the supporting cast is utterly superb, opening with a scene of an imposing middle-aged man delivering an intense monologue about death while loading a gun, setting a disturbing tone, yet when an audience bursts out into applause, enthusiastically lauding the performance, we’re in for a surprise, as it features Michel (Roschdy Zem) as an incarcerated inmate, while the prison drama instructor, Sylvie (Anouk Grinberg), is wildly passionate about his performance, where we sense a deeper connection between the two.  Later we see the two of them happily getting married inside the prison, where everyone’s in a festive mood, even the guards, except a glum Abel, a celebration abruptly cut short due to visiting hours.  This is a tribute to Garrel’s mother Brigitte Sy, who spent twenty years working in prison theater workshops, and did marry one of her students in prison, perhaps best known for her longstanding collaboration with the filmmaker’s father, Philippe Garrel, an uncompromising arthouse director who frequently made stylishly melancholic films starring his son, like REGULAR LOVERS (2005), A Burning Hot Summer (Un été brûlant) (2011), and Jealousy (La Jalousie) (2013).

While the film remains ambiguous about who or what the title refers to, where it may simply be the spirit of the film, Abel’s job is giving tours to children at the aquarium, where his free-spirited work associate is Clémence (Noémie Merlant), who is the real surprise in this picture, as it’s a side of her we haven’t seen before.  Appearing more recently in Céline Sciamma’s 2019 Top Ten List #2 Portrait of a Lady On Fire (Portrait de la jeune fille en feu), a film currently listed at No. 30 in BFI Sight and Sound’s poll for The Greatest Films of All Time, Jacques Audiard’s 2021 #6 Film of the Year Paris, 13th District (Les Olympiades, Paris 13e), and Todd Field’s 2022 Top Ten List #2 Tàr, Merlant has been a rising star in arthouse films, winning the César for Best Supporting Actress in this film, which allows her to extend her range into absurdist comedy, blending high drama into comic farce, adding plenty of personality missing in Garrel’s character, actually becoming the driving force of the picture from behind the scenes.  The central relationship between Sylvie and Michel is initially adorable, as Sylvie is totally smitten, head over heels in love, where the world literally revolves around her man, who just happens to be serving a five-year stretch for grand larceny, offered a second chance of love late in life, as he has resurrected all her hopes and dreams that she’d given up on.  Abel, on the other hand, is a constantly brooding sad sack draining all the life force out of everyone, as he’s suspicious of his mother’s new lover, thinking he’s just another in a long series of his mother’s failed relationships with convicts, while suffering from his own trust issues.  He’s already despondent due to his role in the death of his wife, as she died in a car accident while he was driving, something that has haunted him for years, but Clémence, his wife’s best friend, routinely has to remind him how ridiculously happy his mother is.  Why would anyone crush her dreams?  Nonetheless, the film turns on a dime into a crime caper, with Abel following the recently released Michel like a bungling private eye, becoming obvious wherever he goes, where his amateurishness is overshadowed with just how pathetic his protective instincts are, sensing Michel is lying about getting help from “a friend” in starting a new life, as he and his wife plan to open up a flower boutique together.  It’s a romantic turn of events going from a master thief to a flower peddler, and it’s more than Abel can bear, especially after finding a gun and seeing Michel still running with his old crowd, so he eavesdrops on their clandestine meetings taking place, which Michel lies about, claiming he’s working at a furniture store.  The lies are fast and furious, with Clémence wholeheartedly jumping into help mode, appealing to Abel not to tell his mother, thinking perhaps their own intervention might help set things straight.  Predictably, chaos ensues.

Shot in Lyon, the city of the Lumière brothers and Bertrand Tavernier, a fundamental reference point for French cinephilia, where the French are responsible for some of the best heist scenarios of all time, from Jules Dassin’s RIFIFI (1955), Claude Sautet’s Classe Tous Risques (The Big Risk) (1960), to Jean-Pierre Melville’s BOB LE FLAMBEUR (1956) and LE CIRCLE ROUGE (1970).  Giving thanks to French film director Jacques Audiard, something of a specialist in prison and crime dramas, also getting help from actor Jean-Claude Pautot, a former figure in organized crime who spent decades in jail as a habitual thief and bank robber, thought to be a shining example of rehabilitation gone right, cast as Michel’s crime partner in the film, even appearing on the red carpet in Cannes, but he was rearrested in Spain on drug trafficking charges at the end of 2022 and is currently back in prison.  The film goes to great lengths to expose the lies people will tell, as Abel and Clémence get roped into Michel’s hare-brained scheme, with Clémence thinking this will help Abel break out of his doldrums by actually taking part in Michel’s planned heist, which, of course, is foolproof.  Having heard that before, this is a familiar path straight into the heart of trouble, but taking a novel turn, Michel puts the two of them through relentless rehearsals, not in what to do, but in how to do it, as they must be authentically convincing in creating a distraction, giving the real criminals more time to pull off the theft.  A clever variation on fact and fiction, a bystander must be convinced of their emotional sincerity play-acting a lover’s quarrel in order to be reeled in.  Admittedly, this clever twist is unique and highly original, with Merlant pulling off a master class of diversionary maneuvers in a magnificent sequence that quickly turns sour, where her performance is nothing less than riveting.  What’s supposed to be just for fun seems all too real, as the actors are actually drawn into their own lurid performances, uncertain whether they’re telling the truth or playing a part, taking a delightful detour into romantic sparks and full-blown drama.  The film goes a little off the rails, with screwball comedy turning into a madcap heist gone wrong, becoming more exaggerated by the minute, yet as weird and wacky as it gets, the closer the two would-be actors become in their own developing partnership.  This pack of lies seem to have drawn them together, yet it completely derails the existing romance of Michel and Sylvie, as she refuses to be deceived.  There are memorable moments where crime and romance intersect, joyfully paying homage to Godard’s Breathless (À Bout de Souffle) (1959) and the French New Wave, with Garrel actually playing Godard in Michel Hazanavicius’ film GODARD MON AMOUR (2017), while this is partly inspired by events in the director’s own life, becoming a witty and beautifully constructed oddball mix of family, comedy, romance, suspense, and action in this quintessentially French film that aims to please, generating an enthusiastic response when it premiered out of competition at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, while also receiving a César for Best Original Screenplay.  The characters are memorable, taking us places we never expected.  An eminently playful film with commercial aspirations, it probably plays better in a theater full of delighted patrons, but this is more amusingly offbeat than good.    

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.