Gentle Monster

Bluesky

Denial and doubt, love and abhorrence all swirl about one another in Marie Kreutzer’s Gentle Monster, which like Joachim Lafosse’s 2023 A Silence, comes at the subject of child abuse from the point of view of the wife of an accused man. The subject itself is something that Kreutzer found herself embroiled in after one of the stars of her previous film Corsage, Florian Teichtmeister, was charged and ultimately received a two-year suspended sentence for possession of child pornography – although she reveals in the press notes for the film that she had already been working on Gentle Monster. She adds: “At first, I felt like I couldn’t go on making Gentle Monster because it would always be associated with the Florian Teichtmeister case. But it didn’t take long before I realised that this was precisely why I had to – and wanted to – make this film.”

Lucy (Léa Seydoux) and Philip (Laurence Rupp) are the sort of impoverished creatives who still manage to live in a huge farmhouse – although that is explained later to a degree. Lucy is a French experimental musician, mixing piano with other elements in deconstructed cover versions of songs including Charles & Eddie’s Would I Lie To You and The Cure’s Boys Don’t Cry. Austrian Philip is a documentarian, although it’s evident he’s bringing in less money than her in the current moment. They share a young son Johnny (Malo Blanchet), who appears to be around late infant school/early juniors ages and who they address according to their native language, while also employing English as common communication currency in the household. Apart from slight cash strain, the relationship appears strong, a situation cemented by erotically charged sex scenes. Kreutzer does a great job, in general, of making these relationships feel lived in, from consternation over trampoline construction to getting Johnny to properly brush his teeth.

The domestic bliss is pulled up short when, one morning, police officer Ella (Jella Haase) and her team knock on the door with a search warrant and cart off all of Philip’s hard drives and computers. Kreutzer, helped by a raw and committed performance by Seydoux, captures the confusion at first, the seriousness of the accusations brought home to her by a label on a police station lift button. Knowing that her husband faces serious accusations of child porn possession and distribution leads to an even more difficult confusion – about what she feels for him.

Not only is she having to try to cope with the very real possibility he may have somehow involved their son, she also has nobody to confide in, especially since a close friend, Lukas (Nils Strunk), has been co-opted by Philip to help him in court. Unable to talk to her mother (Catherine Deneuve, nailing her scenes), Lucy finds herself in a sort of no man’s land where anger can only be expressed by arpeggios and where protecting Johnny becomes her number one concern. She also feels conflicted about the excuses Philip is giving her, after all, as she ultimately tells someone, you don’t just stop loving someone overnight.

These sorts of morally grey areas would be more than enough for a film, so that a subplot involving Ella’s father Herrmann (Sylvester Groth) inappropriately touching his nurse (Patrycja Ziółkowska) due to his Alzheimer’s feels rather tacked on. It does, however, show how denial over inappropriate sexual behaviour can manifest in all manner of environments.

Seydoux takes us into the maelstrom with Lucy, determined and doubtful, angry and grief-stricken, fearful and belligerent all at the same time. All of this as life for Johnny and the rest of the world carries on regardless and with the burning yet unanswerable question of whether he might have targeted his own son haunting her. GentleMonster is part of the online name Philip uses but it's also an appropriate summing up of Lucy's conflict – how can the sweet dad she knows simultaneously be a predator?

There’s a bleakness to Gentle Monster that becomes bludgeoning, especially given the lack of any sympathetic male characters save one of Ella’s colleagues. As an acting showcase for Seydoux and, although in the smaller role, Haase, it’s hard to fault.

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