By the Grace of God

Even though the movie doesn't keep up the pace all the time, is great, very emotional without being stupid. And please do not send you children to church or to boy scout camps.

On the surface, this is an impressive movie. It is meticulously scripted and covers much ground with regard to the case of French Catholic priest accused of child sexual abuse. Writer-director Francois Ozon also manages to assemble a competent cast of actors for the various roles like Josiane Balasko as Irene, mother of one of the victims. My problem with this film is its very clinical approach, which may have its strengths; however, i did not find myself moved, touched or feeling sympathy for the characters when i should have been experiencing those emotions while watching the movie. By the end, instead of feeling emotionally walloped, i was left cold. And while the film is stylishly done, nothing stands out other than the shocking expose of the Catholic church which however is nothing new for anyone who has followed the news. For its various merits, this film deserves praise while from this disappointed viewer, the film receives grace.

I saw "By the Grace of God" at the Philadelphia Film Festival and although I'd never consider it an enjoyable film, it's a necessary film...one you really should see. While there have been other films about pedophile priests, and why not since the problem seems so universal, this one is not a documentary but instead makes a few tweaks for cinematic sake...though the facts are essentially true.

In addition to being an important film, director Ozon also crafted it well and managed to get excellent and realistic performances from the cast. In other words, the victims seemed real...not like actors. Overall, an amazingly well made film...one of the better ones I've seen in recent years.

I have followed the events described in this movie through the French press and internet. I knew therefore about the facts and they did not appear as a revelation to me. What surprised me was the quality of the movie. It was very good. It was not an attack towards the institution of the Catholic Church per se. Nevertheless it is critical towards the Church and not as balanced and neutral as it wants to appear. I think that many people will evaluate the film based on their gut feeling for the Catholic Church. The faithful will be offended disbelieving the veracity of the offenses described and attributing them to a hostility against the institution while those in the other end of the spectrum will be happy to see how corrupt the Church really is confirming thus their pre-conceived notions.

Artistically though I consider this movie slightly superior to the Ocsar winning "Spotlight" which dealt with a similar case although on a grander scale and through the view of the investigating journalists rather than the victims. I watched it at the cinema of my neighborhood the first day it opened in Greece. I think that the established film critics of the Athenian press mildly underrated it. This has a positive aspect because when I watched it myself I was pleasantly surprised by the overall quality of the movie. We were only six in the theatre understandable perhaps because it was Thursday. Greeks are relatively pious by European Union standards and perhaps piety deterred them from going to such a movie. On the other hand they are mostly adherents of the Orthodox variety of Christianity and therefore consider Roman Catholics somewhat heretical and thus they would be glad to watch their dirty linen washed in public. Sociological explanation cuts both ways but personally I wish it finds a large audience in Greece and worldwide because it has the artistic quality and the social concern required to touch thinking people conversant with the problems relevant to excessive deference towards ecclesiastical authority.

This film would have been better as a documentary, as concrete people do not mix very well with fictionalised characters. That the characters are mainly composites, leaves a lot of choice for the director, Francois Ozon, to omit certain areas. Two examples; the wife of one of the characters suffered sexual abuse but not within the church. She has only a very short time to admit this to another victim played excellently by Swann Arlaud. In the scenario of this film, only heterosexual males are singled out, and this becomes evident in a key scene, again given too little screen time. That of a character called Didier played superbly by Pierre Lottin (the screen suddenly came vividly to life). He is a youngish man wrecked by the church and its hierarchy, and the sexual offence committed against him by a priest as a child. He has lost outwardly and inwardly, even condemning his own homosexual brother who committed suicide because of a similar assault. He is homophobic and real whereas the others, and there are three who are concentrated on, do not venture into that taboo and unfortunately believable area. Melvil Poupard is initially the main character, well adjusted but disturbed. The focus then shifts towards a second and ultimately to a third, excellently portrayed by Swann Arlaud. Like Didier he has lost out because of church sexual abuse, but he does find a sort of release in joining in with the others when a decision is made to prosecute the church. Personally I found him as well as Didier to be burning indictments of the Catholic Church and its hierarchy. France holds its church highly in its societal and cultural life, but I wished that Ozon in his rather cold direction had stoked the fire against the church more, and allowed other voices than the heterosexual male to do so. A good film that in my opinion could have been longer and risked audience impatience (Jacques Rivette did it before him in other subject matter to great respect). In doing so he could have taken the risk to include in his fictional area the sufferings of other sexualities when they are abused, especially by an institution that cements so much of France together.