Four years ago, Austrian director Marie Kreutzer walked out of the Cannes Film Festival to rave reviews for her period drama. Corsage in the depths of despair when he heard that one of the stars of the film – Florian Teichtmeister – was charged and then charged with the possession and production of child pornography. Teichtmeister’s convictions and sentence severely damaged the remainder Corsage’s, so curiosity quickly grew when Kreutzer’s next project was confirmed to be about child sexual exploitation.
The director said that The Gentle Monster The drink had been brewing for years before the incident, but it’s impossible not to see it as closely related to his real-life experience. This personal connection is overshadowed by a lot of drama guided by a confusing sense of confusion and uncertainty, and that follows the difficult situation of Léa Seydoux’s Lucy Weiss, a singer whose marriage to film producer Philip (Laurence Rupp) is irretrievably disrupted when he is taken into police custody under suspicion of having sex with children.
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Before the police visit that would split their lives into two different eras, Lucy and Philip were settling into their luxurious country home, a home big enough to accommodate their large family of three. First we find a couple spending a leisurely afternoon trying to assemble a trampoline in the garden or singing. .‘In yellow’ is their nine-year-old son Johnny (Malo Blanchet), the rhythm of their lives dictated by the ebb and flow of production that often plagues creators. Lucy cooks while Philip continues his early morning run – when he comes home drenched in sweat and heads for the shower, he emerges naked and dripping wet, running after Johnny and standing on his lap to make sure the boy is brushing his teeth.
This is one of many provocative but dirty scenes at the end, with Kreutzer’s insistence on empty suggestion – coupled with the persistent sight of repeated set-ups without proper benefit – turning. The Gentle Monster in the frustrating classification of taboo that demands careful consideration. Pianist Lucy’s career revolves around .“reconstructed” male-dominated pop music, his long fingers twitching and shaking the piano keys as Kreutzer makes him a trench of overexposure. As the French actor whispers evilly to Charles & Eddie’s biggest hit .‘Can I Lie To You?’ one can almost hear the sound of a hammer hitting any craft.
A subplot involving a tough policewoman tasked with caring for her ailing father furthers the film’s rhythm, as Kreutzer is more concerned with writing her story through a wider lens than zooming in on the breakdown of an already broken relationship marred by the terrifying realization that one can never fully know another. Seydoux’s often absurd front-runners fall into the pitfalls of the film’s tendency toward pastiche, turning his handsome face into a Munchian expression as he effectively delivers a climactic monologue delivered with such restrained attachment to the page that it shatters any pretense of reality.
It’s a shame that this meta-drama-slash-thriller shows an almost unbelievable resistance to pulling and tugging at the fragile knots of paraphilia. What is left in its place is a body that could be glorified, afraid to cross a line that has already been broken from the start.
