Some stories just don’t seem to benefit from an ultra-delicate treatment on screen, and Joachim Lafosse’s careful bourgeois drama about a pedophile in the family – someone everyone knows but no one talks about — is a case in point.
Despite two French stars the caliber of Daniel Auteuil and Emmanuelle Devos fretting over how to handle a hot situation about to boil over, A Silence pretty much lives up to the mood suggested by its title: a long, painful delay until the big reveal scene which, when it happens, takes place off screen and in the dark. And just to make sure the act of violence doesn’t come as too much of a shock, it is anticipated in the first scene, a flash-forward to the police investigation. This Belgian-French-Luxembourg coprod bowed in San Sebastian’s Official Selection and will probably attract mainly Euro audiences for its sensitive, tasteful take on a bitter, tasteless topic.
Belgian auteur Joachim Lafosse (Private Property, Loving without Reason) is well-known to festival audiences for his stories of marriages on the verge of breakdown and families coming unglued, like his recent tale of a bipolar painter in The Restless. Here the couple is question have been married some 25 years and have a grown-up daughter living on her own and an adopted son in high school. Raphael (Matthieu Galoux), the son, is shaggy-haired and shifty-eyed, a rebel who has been cutting school and who obviously harbors a secret of some sort. Yet he puts up with his possessive mom Astrid (Devos), who showers him with money and the keys to her convertible. She also likes to dance close to him with her head on his shoulder, though this is merely a yellow light in the context of the film.
The red lights involve dad Francois (Auteuil), a fiery attorney who has spent years on the highly publicized case of two girls who were raped and murdered. Ironically, he himself has been in therapy for his pedophiliac urges, and it’s not just child pornography we’re talking about: his wife’s younger brother is threatening to press charges for rape when he was underage. Astrid naively tells herself all this is in the past and Francois has reformed. We wait for the cops to pick up the case and see where it leads.
Astrid is the central character around which the family starts to unwind. As her husband points out while his legal peril mounts, she is the only one who knows him and has forgiven him. Devos does a balancing act in scene after scene, trying to keep the ship afloat, and while one can understand her problem, it’s hard to find much sympathy for her. Auteuil, on the other hand, also walks a moral tightrope but is such a consummate actor, he makes it hard to take sides against him. As Raphael sagaciously notes, he can talk his way out of anything because people believe him.
The family residence, a sprawling country house on the outskirts of a city, is the main stage where the drama unfolds, along with the inside of cars, where more tense conversations are held than in your average Iranian movie. Here everyone seems to be driving somewhere in unseen traffic that slows the film down. Although there is an unnatural lack of servants (who does the cleaning, the ironing, the mowing?), perhaps to keep the family drama undiluted, the house is constantly under siege by a flurry of TV journalists with cameras and microphones. They actually sleep in their cars outside the estate’s gate, waiting to pounce on Francois about his court case. As a Greek chorus they’re one of the film’s more imaginative inventions.
Lafosse’s regular D.P Jean-Francois Hensgens surrounds the family in a seemingly impervious atmosphere of wealth and tranquility, with his gorgeous lighting and economy of shots that rarely move to follow the characters, but at the same time don’t draw attention to themselves. Seven different music credits are listed, creating a silky background score.
Director: Joachim Lafosse
Screenplay: Joachim Lafosse, Chloé Duponchelle, Paul Ismael
Cast: Emmanuelle Devos, Daniel Auteuil, Matthieu Galoux, Salomé Dewaels, Jeanne Cherhal
Producers: Anton Iffland Stettner, Jani Thiltges
Cinematography: Jean-Francois Hensgens
Editing: Damien Keyeux
Production design: Anna Falguères
Costume design: Isabel Van Renterghem
Music: Meredi , Hania Rani, Hannah Peele, Tepr , Michel Berger, Johann Johannsson, Olafur Arnalds
Sound: Alain Goniva, Françoist Dumon, Xavier Dujardin, Thomas Gauger
Production companies: Stenola Productions (Belgium), Samsa Film (Luxembourg), Les Films du Losange (France)
World Sales: Les Films du Losange
Venue: San Sebastian Film Festival (Official Selection)
In French
100 minutes
