Sight&Sound - 11.2019

FILMS OF THE MONTH

52 | Sight&Sound | November 2019

Reviewed by Roger Clarke

By the Grace of God sees an important French

director in mid-career pomp taking time out

from a perfected style in the service of something

sober and admirable. François Ozon, perhaps

best known for his teasing psychodramas,

here tackles a real-life case concerning the

Roman Catholic Church and the failure of the

diocese of Lyon to suspend a historical child

abuser, one Father Bernard Preynat. This is a

story whose consequences and momentum

have continued long after the film wrapped.

From its epistolary opening words, By the

Grace of God is based around three individuals

in particular and more generally the activism of

the group La Parole Libérée (known in English as

Lift the Burden of Silence): an association with

a strong online presence run by the survivors

of Preynat’s abuse (his name coincidentally

seeming replete with intimations of predation,

prayer and the natal). Despite confessing to his

activities, Preynat was permitted, against all

decency, to continue working in the mainstream

Church, and worse, allowed close proximity

to children attending confirmation classes.

Ozon has cast Melvil Poupaud (who last

to formally renounce his childhood religion,

and is appalled by the stubborn moral inertia

of his broader family. Alexandre discusses

everything with his wife and family with

uncomplicated ease. Emmanuel, meanwhile,

thrives on having a purpose in life, suddenly

and miraculously, as part of this campaigning

group. He seems to pull back from disaster,

even death itself, and removes toxic people

from his life, while embracing a renewed

relationship with his mother. His chronic illness

is also depicted, every spasm and syncope.

There’s one especially good scene that is worth

waiting for. At a mediation effort organised

by the diocese, Preynat, bleary with self-pity,

initially treats the men as the boys they used to

be – as if he can’t process them as adults, as if he

is hallucinating. But is he simply playing them

all? Probably. It’s a haunting, angry showdown,

during which Preynat declares that he has a

sickness, claiming to be a victim himself and

hiding deceitfully under his own self-diagnosis.

The way that issues of health, illness and welfare

are twisted and coerced by establishment players

using the language of kindness and restoration

is one of the most disgusting aspects of the tale.

worked with him in 2005’s Time to Leave) in the

lead role of well-heeled, conservative Alexandre

• the character with whom, one is tempted
  to speculate, he feels the greatest affinity. In
  dynamic counterpoint, he casts bearish actor
  Denis Ménochet as the more agitated, atheistic
  victim François. The third protagonist in
  this survivors’ trinity is Emmanuel, the most
  damaged of them all. He is played by the wiry
  Swann Arlaud (chosen by Ozon after seeing him
  in Hubert Charuel’s 2017 farming drama Petit
  Paysan), who delivers a fine, kinetic performance.
  These three men are pushing for criminal
  charges to be brought against Preynat, who is
  in turn portrayed with steady, censer-swinging
  obstinacy by Bernard Verley. Verley is well
  prepared for such a role, having played the
  cardinal in La Reine Margot (1994), Pontius Pilate
  in Serge Moati’s Jésus (1999) and even Jesus
  himself in Luis Bunuel’s satiric Milky Way (1969).
  He is an actor who has been slowly working
  backwards from a point of charming divinity
  to one of priestly bestiality in the lower ranks.
  By the Grace of God has a fine, quick purpose
  in its narrative, which grows more pointed as
  the story turns into a race against time – since,
  if the court process is not hurried along, the
  statute of limitations will disallow dozens of
  cases. François’s response to the situation is to
  push his atheism to the point that he wants

Touch of evil: Melvil Poupaud plays a man seeking justice for the abuse he received as a child at the hands of a Catholic priest, in François Ozon’s real-life drama

Ozon can’t resist a splash of

stylisation, notably in the flashbacks

to the scout camps where the

abuse took place: these are

dreamlike, their colours saturated

France/Belgium 2018

Director François Ozon

Certificate 15 137m 59s

By the Grace of God

A RT

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FOTM, 1