A Silence. (2023) French with subtitles. Starring: Daniel Auteuil, Emmanuelle Devos, Matthieu Galoux. Director: Joachim Lafosse. Running time: 99 minutes. Rated MA
This movie is about the secrets that lie dormant in a family and the silence that is complicit in keeping it this way. Thirty years later, the exposure of this secret leads to an irretrievable breakdown of a carefully curated domestic harmony.
In the warmth of the Nova cinema, I had no idea what to expect with the film’s narrative and the key event and its repercussions were not revealed until well into the movie. However, this initial disorientation was cleverly done, in part because of the good acting and the lingering camera close-ups.
Throughout the film, these close-ups help the audience to empathise with what may be going on inside the female character’s head. The film starts and finishes with the viewer looking at Astrid (Devos) and wondering what has occasioned her tears in the first instance, and how she will cope with her imploding domestic life as the film closes.
This film is similar to a true story that Belgian viewers may be familiar with. However, for the rest of us, it revolves around the act of complicity, of silence, of keeping quiet, that can have a harrowing impact once that silence is broken.
The bourgeois Schaar family appear to have it all. The father Francois (Auteuil) is a renowned lawyer who is working with the parents of kidnapped children. Devos plays the dutiful wife and mother to her husband and their adopted son, moody adolescent Raphael (Galoux) who is failing school. An encampment of journalists loiters with cameras ready outside the property as they await any word from Schaar as he represents his clients in this high-profile case which has garnered much public interest.
This is not a brightly lit film. The interior shots are dark and shadowy, with doors opening and closing and the large house separating rather than linking its three inhabitants. A number of key scenes are in cars; a reminder that the confined car space is often where things get said or told or blurted out between parents and children. By way of contrast, the disco scenes with a spaced-out Raphael are all boom and blast. Generally, the music is gentle and incidental, verging on the melancholic.
The Schaars have an older daughter, Caroline, who is married with a toddler. It is she who breaks the code of silence when she tells her mother that ‘Pierre is going to press charges’.
Astrid responds with an array of cliched excuses: it was so long ago/ the two people involved have talked it through/ Francois has been counselled/ the need to keep it buried. Caroline and Astrid have words and Raphel wants to know what is going on. She provides a few sentences that implicate Francois, while trying to make excuses for her husband’s behaviour 30 years ago when she was pregnant with Caroline.
This is the silence she has bartered with to keep her good life and now the cracks are showing. Raphael goes on a bender and in his drunken state drives home and attempts to murder his father.
I enjoyed this film as it dealt with the topic of child abuse/ pornography in a subtle way without the need for graphic scenes.
What I did find “icky” was the slow dance with mother and son and their sharing of a double bed in a hotel. Perhaps this was a bit of a red herring for the audience, but certainly raised the issue of inappropriate sexual behaviour. What was also worrying was that Raphael had been able to access pornography through initially finding DVDs in his father’s office. He was eight. Eight years later he is till watching this material online and one fears for his predilection as he matures. It is assumed his mother knew about both the father and son’s laptop viewing and said nothing. She remained silent so that her gilded life was not threatened.
The end of the film supplies one answer and leaves us to wonder about the other. Francois is convicted of possessing child pornography and is given a suspended sentence. The statute of limitations means the case of sexual abuse against him cannot proceed. For Francois, the whole thing has been an unnecessary ruffling of his smooth and privileged life. Raphael awaits his sentence, after having rebuffed his father’s showy attempt at an embrace in the court.
Astrid, as the camera candidly films her face, counts the cost of her silence and the havoc it has wrought in her life.
Released 27 June