GENTLE MONSTER Luminaries

With her searing Cannes-debuted sixth feature, Austrian filmmaker Marie Kreutzer (CORSAGE) turns personal experience and ripped-from-the-headlines stories into a bold study of trust, denial and the unsettling truth that monsters lurk in the most ordinary of places. Avant-garde concert pianist Lucy (Léa Seydoux in a fearless performance) has moved her small family from Munich to the German countryside in a bid to help her husband Philip (Laurence Rupp) recover from burnout, hoping that quieter surroundings will gift them a fresh start. Instead, their new beginning is shattered when Philip is arrested, his electronics seized and an investigation opened into unthinkable crimes involving child pornography and his secret online identity. Isolated from family and friends and thrown into an ocean of doubt and uncertainly, Lucy is forced to confront the possibility that the man she loves may have been hiding something horrific — and to decide what that means for her young son, her marriage, her understanding of her past and her future. As Lucy’s world becomes increasingly destabilized, she finds her life intersecting with the case’s stern lead investigator, Elsa (Jella Haase), herself conflicted as she uneasily confronts the warning signs of abusive behavior within her own household. Seydoux’s remarkable performance expertly conveys the emotional swings of a wife and mother experiencing confusion, doubt and mounting dread, all while clinging to the last dregs of hope that there has been a terrible mistake, something her forthright mother (Catherine Deneuve) won’t entertain. Following CORSAGE, Kreutzer again combines psychological unease with a sharply observed portrait of a woman negotiating forces beyond her control. Rather than treating its disturbing subject as spectacle, GENTLE MONSTER offers a nuanced, frank and powerful exploration of the ways in which women are often left to confront the emotional, moral and practical aftermath of crimes committed by those they love and trust. –Abbie Algar