À perdre la raison (2012)
Directed by Joachim Lafosse

Film Review

Judging by his previous four features, Joachim Lafosse appears to be an artist who is naturally drawn to the darker, more twisted aspects of human experience, often within the stifling confines of the dysfunctional family.  In his latest film, the 37-year-old Belgian filmmaker serves up more of the same as he recounts the events which lead a seemingly ordinary, well-adjusted woman to murder her four young children.   Inspired by a real-life multiple infanticide committed by a Belgian mother, Geneviève Lhermitte, in 2007, À perdre la raison (a.k.a. Our Children) sets out to convince us that the most unthinkable of crimes can naturally arise from the most ordinary of circumstances, and in the safest of environments.

À perdre la raison is every bit as delicately crafted and unsettling as Lafosse's previous portrayals of domestic disharmony - Nue propriété (2006) and Élève libre (2008) - and just as provocative.  Lafosse has no interest in passing judgement on what is, in most people's book, the most heinous of domestic crimes, but nor does he seek to exculpate the killer.  Instead he takes a completely neutral standpoint and invites us to do the same, so that we may begin to understand how such unspeakable horrors can arise within what appears to be the most benign of settings.  In spite of what the tabloid newspapers would have us believe, most murders that take place within the home are not committed by born monsters, but by ordinary people in a moment of madness.  We like to think the world is made up of good and bad people, but this is merely a comforting delusion.  The truth is far more complex.

Lafosse is wise to tell the story from the perspective of the central character, Murielle.  This gives the film its focus and forces us to identify with an individual who, once her crime has been splashed all over the newspapers, will undoubtedly be branded a monster.  Murielle is anything but a monster.  When we first see her, she appears to be the victim of some unimaginable personal tragedy.  Lying in bed in hospital, she is obsessed with a single idea, that her children be buried in Morocco.  We see four small white coffins being loaded aboard a plane.  And then there is the extended flashback which shows how this tragic endpoint was arrived at.  The story begins as though it were a fairytale, with Murielle, full of life and happiness, marrying the man she loves.  There is no hint of the disaster that is to come, and it is hard to imagine how Murielle could in any way be responsible for the death of her four children.  The most disturbing aspect of the journey that Lafosse takes us on as we accompany Murielle on her descent into Hell is its mundanity - it is something that could happen to anyone.

Emilie Dequenne has come a long way since her remarkable debut in the Dardennes brothers' Rosetta (1999).  Now, perfectly chosen to play the lead in Lafosse's darkest film to date, she delivers what is undoubtedly her finest performance, one of extraordinary power and subtlety.  Dequenne compels sympathy as we witness Murielle's imperceptibly slow descent into depression, a decline caused not by neglect or material need but by a hopeless sense of entrapment in a world that offers her no possibility for escape or development.  It is not cruelty that robs Murielle of her zest for living and transforms her into a modern Medea, it is the fact that she has allowed herself to become trapped in a non-existence of life-sapping sterility.  Depression is one of the hardest things that an actor can play convincingly, but Dequenne does an admirable job and it is hard not be moved by her harrowing portrayal of a young mother slowly drowning in a sea of desolation.  She was justly honoured with the Best Actress award when the film premiered in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival in 2012.

In a near-reprise of their close father-son relationship in Jacques Audiard's Un prophète (2009), Niels Arestrup and Tahar Rahim supply the film's other two gripping performances.  It is the unbreakable bond between their two characters that is the central unresolved mystery of the film, and the thing that triggers the tragic outcome.  Of the three main characters, Arestrup's Dr Pinget is the most ambiguous and the most disturbing.  When we first see him, he appears to be the model altruist, a man who dedicates his life to helping his fellow man and expects nothing in return.  He has a marriage of convenience with a poor Moroccan woman so that he can adopt her young son Mounir and give him the life he could never have hoped to have otherwise.  But are Pinget's motives as selfless as they appear?  Could there be a more sinister purpose behind his desire to adopt an attractive young Moroccan boy?

Mounir's tie to his benefactor is as unfathomable as the latter's willingness to give him everything he asks for.  Naturally Mounir should feel grateful for Pinget's kindness, but is gratitude alone the reason for his filial devotion?   Perhaps we should see a parallel in the slightly sinister relationship between a teacher and his pupil in Joachim's previous film Élève libre, a relationship with a distinct hint of paedophilia about it.  As the film develops, it becomes apparent that Pinget needs Mournir and Murielle as much as they need him.  Like a vampire, he feeds vicariously on their conjugal life, the life he could never have for himself.  It is as if they are playthings to him, and you can imagine he delights in the power he has over them.  The near-incestuous arrangement suits the weak, spiritless Mournir, but for Murielle it spells disaster.  Her safe home becomes no more than a luxuriously furnished prison, in which she is merely a household pet or a domestic drone.  Unable to break free of her dependency on Pinget and her husband, Murielle loses her own identity and becomes increasingly isolated.  Murielle's emotional and moral collapse is not sudden; it takes place over several years, a gradual erosion of her dignity and strength.  In the end, suicide is the only way out, and what could be more natural than for a desperate mother to take her children with her?

À perdre la raison feels like a close relation (perhaps an illegitimate child) of a Claude Chabrol film.   As in Chabrol's better films (for example, La Cérémonie, 1995), we cannot help but have a sense of something extremely nasty gestating beneath a surface of apparent normality.  Like Chabrol, Lafosse underplays the drama and exploits the ambiguity of his characters to maintain our interest and heighten the dramatic impact of the film's ending.  Lafosse is not interested in cheap thrills, and he certainly doesn't dwell on the horrific denouement as a lesser, more sensationalist filmmaker might.  What he demands is that we see beyond the horror of the crime and appreciate the normality of the circumstances that led up to it, the slowly corrosive banalities that culminate in Zero Hour.  If we are disturbed by À perdre la raison, it is because it challenges the facile notion that monstrous acts can only be performed by monstrous people.  Whilst it may be comforting to pretend that only bad people do bad things, the reality is that human nature is far more complicated, and it is no bad thing that there are filmmakers like Joachim Lafosse to go on reminding us of this fact.

Film Synopsis

Murielle and Mounir are a young couple who desperately want to get married and start a family.  Fortunately, they have a kindly benefactor in Dr Pinget, the man who has looked after Mounir since he was a small boy and come to regard him as his own son.  It is Pinget who provides the couple with not only a fabulous honeymoon but also a place to live - in his home.  At first, the cohabitation works out fine.  The couple settle down and soon have the children they wanted.  They could not be happier.  But then, gradually, Murielle comes to resent Pinget's unwavering generosity and wishes she was free of it.  Mounir cannot understand his wife's ingratitude - he owes Pinget too much to refuse the kindnesses he keeps offering him.  Feeling increasingly trapped Murielle slowly goes out of her mind...