Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
Alexandre, a man in his 40s living in Lyon with his wife and children, discovers that the priest who abused him decades ago continues to work with children. He joins forces with others victims of the priest, to bring justice and “lift the burden of silence” about what they endured.
François Ozon's methodical, rigorously structured dramatization of the real-life Preynat/Barbarin scandal in Lyon is one of the most compelling procedural dramas about institutional Catholic Church abuse. The plot earns a genuine 4 for its unusual three-act structure, following three different survivors in succession — a device that keeps expanding the emotional and social scope of the story without losing momentum. Acting is solid and naturalistic across the ensemble (Melvil Poupaud, Denis Ménochet, Swann Arlaud), though no single performance reaches exceptional heights. Cinematography is functional and restrained, befitting the documentary-realist tone but not particularly distinctive. Novelty earns a 3 — while the subject matter had been explored (Spotlight being the obvious comparison), Ozon's relay-baton structure and the specifically French institutional context give it a real identity. The ending is appropriately unresolved and open — justice is partial, the institutional machinery grinds slowly — which is truthful to the real events but deliberately undramatic, landing at above average rather than exceptional.