Jusqu'à la garde (2018)
Directed by Xavier Legrand

Film Review

Given how prevalent a phenomenon domestic violence has become in recent times, and how shocking the statistics are (in the UK two women die each week at the hands of present or former partners), it is surprising that it remains something of a taboo subject for filmmakers.  Jusqu'à la garde (a.k.a. Custody), the first feature from up-and-coming French film director Xavier Legrand, is a rare and timely excursion into this most unjustifiably overlooked of subjects.  The film had such a positive critical reaction in France in 2018 that it could hardly fail to raise the profile of the unspoken tyranny that blights so many lives today.

The film follows on from Legrand's first directorial offering, a short entitled Avant que de tout perdre (2012), which was originally conceived as the first in a series of three shorts on the subject of domestic violence. Such was the impact of his first short (it was nominated for an Oscar in 2014) that Legrand immediately adapted his plans and instead opted to pour his ideas into a single feature, with lead actors Léa Drucker and Denis Ménochet reprising their respective roles from the first film.  In this, the director eschewed conventional social realism and instead took his cue from one of his personal heroes, Claude Chabrol, to force us to view his harrowing abuse drama through the prism of a savagely intense psychological thriller.  Obvious influences include Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter (1955), Robert Benton's Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) and - in the film's terrifying final act - Stanley Kubrick's horror classic The Shining (1980).

Whilst he has so far devoted most of his career to acting (mostly on the French stage), Xavier Legrand shows immense promise as a filmmaker, and one with an instinctive knack for bridging the gulf between mainstream cinema and more challenging film d'auteur.  Jusqu'à la garde is both a serious attempt to show the abject horror of domestic violence and a gripping entertainment that propels you on rollercoaster ride into the abyss, leaving you shaken, queasy and yet unaccountably exhilarated.  With a confidence that completely belies his lack of experience as a director, Legrand takes the best ingredients of social realist drama and noir thriller and from these constructs an authentic piece of cinema of extraordinary power and immediacy - a spectacular and fantastically effective fusion of the worlds of Maurice Pialar and Claude Chabrol.

Jusqu'à la garde owes a great deal to its director's flair for invention and commitment to his subject matter, but it owes nearly as much to the performances of its principal cast.  Denis Ménochet was a perfect choice for the role of the villain of the piece, the discarded husband intent on wreaking havoc on the lives of his son and wife in order to fulfil a delusion fantasy - a return to normal family life.  Ménochet's Antoine at first appears so likeably ordinary that we immediately suspect he is the victim of his wife's calculated attempts to drive him out of her life and thereby obtain sole custody of her son.  But gradually the perspective shifts and we see how things really are.  Far from being Mr Nice Guy, Antoine is a man consumed with a pathological fear of rejection, totally incapable of reining in his violent instincts and therefore the most dangerous of adversaries.  Ménochet has such an impact in the role that you can feel his solid brutal presence even when he is out of shot, a constant lurking menace ready to pounce at any moment.

The threat posed by Antoine is harrowingly underscored by Léa Drucker's vivid portrayal of the woman who, thanks to a judicial failing, is forced to live in a state of perpetual fear, the only person who knows what her ex is capable of.  For an actress who is more readily associated with light comedy than hard-edged drama, Drucker impresses as an actress of hidden depths, capable of conveying fully the sheer torment of the anticipated horrors that lie in store for her character.  Thomas Gioria likewise has a tremendous impact as the 11-year-old son who falls foul of his father's vile machinations and ends by being caught up in a screaming hurricane of mental anguish.  As the drama builds to its nerve-racking climax, it is Drucker and Gioria that we are compelled to identify with, lost orphans of the storm trapped in a nightmarish horrorscape, struggling to hold on as all the demons of the night rain down upon them.

Enjoyably compelling as the film is, Xavier Legrand deserves most credit for taking a problematic and poorly understood subject and forcing us to fix our gaze on the terrible reality of domestic violence.  Some may lambast the film for its blithe appropriation of thriller trappings, but these Legrand uses masterfully and with genuine concern to show us just how destructive such violence can be if it is not checked.  The film was justifiably honoured at the Césars ceremony in 2019 with an impressive tally of ten nominations, winning awards in the four categories of Best Film, Best Actress (Léa Drucker), Best Screenplay and Best Editing.  It also received the prestigious Louis Delluc Prize in 2018 for the Best First Film, and took two major awards at the 2017 Venice Film Festival: the Silver Lion for Best Director and the Luigi De Laurentiis Prize for Best First Film.  The critics and awards committees clearly loved the film, but whether it does anything to alleviate the problem of domestic violence remains to be seen.  At the very least, Jusqu'à la garde makes us far more aware of the issue than we might have been, and this is surely a step in the right direction.

Film Synopsis

Miriam and Antoine Besson are a French couple in their mid-forties who are going through the motions of a fraught separation and divorce.  Miriam is convinced that her husband is a threat to both herself and her 11-year-old son Julien.  She wants nothing more to do with him and offers an impassioned plea to the judge charged with her case to grant her sole custody of her son.  Julien is also afraid of his father and writes a letter in support of his mother's case.  To his friends and colleagues, Antoine's behaviour and appearance would seem to be at variance with his wife's impassioned objections to him.  A conscientious and respected hospital employee, his one ambition in life is to prove himself a devoted husband and father.

In the end, Miriam's appeal falls on deaf ears.  Antoine is accorded the legal right to have custody of his son for one weekend every fortnight, and immediately he takes advantage of this in a desperate bid to heal the rift with his ex-wife.  By manipulating his son Antoine reckons he can pressurise Myriam into allowing them to resume their former life together.  When this fails, the rejected husband begins to lose his grip on reality and resorts to ever more drastic means to achieve his ends, using Julien as a pawn in a game that cannot end well for anyone...