Film
By the Grace of God
- Director
- Francois Ozon
- Certificate
- 15
- Running Time
- 138 mins
François Ozon cements his reputation as one of the most interesting directors working in modern French cinema with yet another thematic left turn. Following last year’s playful erotic thriller L’Amant Double, he tackles the Catholic Church’s child abuse cover-up scandal with this true-life, Spotlight-style drama based on the background to a trial that was still ongoing when the film premiered back in February.
Laying bare the bullshit behind those oily ‘zero-tolerance’ PR statements that have become so familiar, Ozon’s quietly powerful film follows married devout Catholic Alexandre (Melvil Poupaud), who’s alarmed to learn by chance that Bernard Preynat (Bernard Verley), the septuagenarian priest who abused him as a child, is still at it. Perhaps rather naively, he assumes he will be doing his church a favour by exposing this befrocked paedo. Preynat went to court in an attempt to block the film’s release in France, but was unsuccessful.
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