A Silence – first-look review

There’s some­thing deeply unset­tling about the new film from Bel­gian direc­tor Joachim Lafos­se. Beyond the fact that it explores issues of child abuse and pae­dophi­la, framed as over­sized skele­tons in the clos­et of a well-to-do French fam­i­ly, the deci­sion has been made to focus on the guilt of the one osten­si­bly inno­cent par­ty in the mix: the matri­arch, Astrid, played with cus­tom­ary detail and qui­et inten­si­ty by the great Emanuelle Devos.

Lafosse’s recent run of films have all been real-life stranger-than-fic­tion sto­ries of the type you might see in the tabloids that line the super­mar­ket walls. A Silence is more of the same, a class­i­ly told but trashily-toned tale of impos­ing celebri­ty lawyer François Schaar (Daniel Auteuil) who, while puff­ing out his chest as the face of a scan­dalous, nation­al-inter­est child abuse case, is also nurs­ing his own pri­vate predilec­tions for ille­gal pornography.

Astrid, the under­stand­ably emo­tion­al­ly dis­tant spouse, leaves her hus­band to tend to his sick wears, focus­ing her dot­ing atten­tion on bring­ing up their per­pet­u­al­ly-mis­be­hav­ing son Raphaël (Mattheu Galoux). When Raphaël does some­thing bad, such as play­ing tru­ant from school, she uses ​“papa” as a tool for manip­u­la­tion, know­ing that his very pres­ence should strike fear into her son’s heart, as it does her. Auteuil’s scowl­ing, mys­te­ri­ous per­for­mance paints his char­ac­ter as a gar­den vari­ety mon­ster for whom we are made to feel lit­tle empa­thy despite his con­stant, false assur­ances that he has learned from his mistakes.

What makes Astrid’s wick­et even more sticky is the fact that she’s also cov­er­ing up the fact that François spent over a year sex­u­al­ly abus­ing her younger broth­er, Pierre, and she has been con­di­tioned by her hus­band into believ­ing the sit­u­a­tion is over and has been dealt with. Not, it tran­spires, for the vic­tim, whose scars still throb 30 years lat­er and now feels empow­ered to take his broth­er-in-law to court. Poor tim­ing as François’ own block­buster abuse case is about to reach its apex.

The film is based on the real life ​“Him­mel affair” from the mid-’90s, though Lafos­se is less inter­est­ed in his­tor­i­cal fideli­ty than he is play­ing on the psy­ch­dra­mat­ic ten­sions of this tru­ly trans­gres­sive fam­i­ly. It’s some­times hard to under­stand why Astrid has spent so long cov­er­ing up for her hus­band (the tit­u­lar ​“silence”) when her own life seems to involve try­ing to sub­sume his many micro-aggres­sions and gaslight­ing admis­sions. And it’s also one of those films which plays out in flash­back with its con­clu­sion deliv­ered as a pro­logue, which in this case only serves to drain the sto­ry of dra­ma as we know too much from the off.

While the per­for­mances are sol­id across the board, with Devos bear­ing the largest emo­tion­al load, the bulk of the film is for­mal­ly under­whelm­ing, as images of the bor­ing­ly-shot Schaar estate are over­laid with lead­ing, over­ly-emo­tive music cues. There’s fun to be had from watch­ing the infor­ma­tion drip down, as char­ac­ters slow­ly realise (and react to) what the oth­ers already know. But for the most part A Silence takes too much lurid plea­sure in the telling of this deeply unset­tling tale, and it ends up offer­ing a sim­plis­tic, high­ly moral­is­tic and dra­mat­i­cal­ly wish-ful­fill­ing assess­ment of its com­plex subjects.