Director Marie Kreutzer’s previous film, the excellent royal drama Corsage, was ripped apart by scandal involving its lead actor who was caught up in child pornography charges. Whether her experience with that led her to write and direct the sobering, hard-hitting Netflix original, Gentle Monster, which tackles a similar topic, isn’t clear. Whether it was or wasn’t, Kreutzer’s gaze isn’t on the accused, but on the impact those accusations have on his stunned wife, played by Léa Seydoux in one of the finest performances of her career.
Seydoux plays Lucy, a concert pianist, with Laurence Rupp as her husband, Phil. Both of them are creatives, with him being a filmmaker in a bit of a rut. After he suffers a panic attack, they move with their playful son Johnny (Malo Blanchet) from the city to the German countryside to get away from it all.
Does moving away to a place ever work in movies? Or does it only provide a glimmer of hope before the horrors begin? Certainly, the latter is the case here. A seemingly normal day is disrupted by a knock on the door by the police, looking to serve a search warrant on Phil. They confiscate all of his devices and hard drives, while Lucy is left confused by what is happening. She only finds out the truth of the charges by following them to the police station and seeing a notice on the board: child pornography.
Gentle Monster isn’t so much about Phil’s guilt or innocence, although that is obviously important. It’s mainly about Lucy and how she copes with realizing that she doesn’t know her husband at all, that he’s this completely different person hidden away from her. There’s something monstrous, evil, in the kind of person who can do that to someone they love. But is that actually what happened? Phil tells her it’s all a mistake, even recruiting a lawyer friend to say that it was all just research for a documentary. There’s another dark cloud hanging over everything, and it’s the question of whether Phil did anything to hurt Johnny?
There’s nothing cut and dried here, no black and white answer to anything. It can be frustrating how Kreutzer sort of plays the middle ground for a long stretch. Our instinct is to want Lucy to pack up her shit, pack up Johnny, and get as far away from him as possible. But love doesn’t work that way. We instinctively seek reasons to understand and forgive the people we love when they screw up. How can Lucy possibly believe that her dopey husband is a potential pedophile?
Kreutzer explores the relative nature of guilt and innocence from another angle in an important subplot involving the lead detective, Elsa Kuhn (Jella Haase), who has her own problems at home. A quiet, detached introvert who offers Lucy little in the way of support, we come to learn that she’s saddled with an aging father who is prone to abusing his female caretakers. One might think that a law enforcement officer working sex abuse cases would be better about handling this than Elsa, but she isn’t, because he’s her father, she loves him, and it’s her responsibility to watch over him. She and Lucy aren’t very different at all.
Gentle Monster is strongest when examining Lucy’s internal struggle. She faces not only confusion about what to believe, but also subtle accusations from those who feel she should’ve seen what was happening. Seydoux is a whirlwind of raw emotions: humiliated, angry, fragile, and determined, with the camera often in close-up on her to capture her intensity. Conversely, Phil is often shot in a position of weakness, an understated judgment in place of something more explicit in the screenplay.
This is a tough, unnerving movie, with Seydoux making her strongest play for awards consideration. Gentle Monster won’t be an easy watch, and with these crimes more prevalent than ever, it’s going to hit hard and very close to home for those impacted by them.
Gentle Monster opens in select theaters October 30th, followed by Netflix on November 18th.
