"This is before her Austrian husband Philip (Laurence Rupp) - a documentary TV producer of marginal success - comes home in a burnout panic that spurs them to permanently relocate their family to a cottage in the German countryside. Before the authorities bang on their door with a warrant for Philip's arrest, forcing Lucy to ride the elevator up to the clearly designated "child porn" floor of the local police station in order to learn the facts of his case. Before she begins to wonder, in rage and terror and desperate layers of self-protective doubt, whether the father of her young son Johnny (Malo Blanchet) might actually be capable of preying on other kids, or even his own."
"Among other things, this tough and unflinching social drama is a study in how painful it can be for a rhetorical question - like "Would I lie to you, baby?," for example - to sour into the stomach-churning stuff of an urgent mystery. For the terms of a relationship to change faster than the facts of the matter are able to keep up with, let alone the feelings that might attend to them. "There is no 'off button' for pedophilia," someone explains to Lucy at one point. There isn't an "off button" for love either."
"Perhaps that's why Lucy was able to ignore the signs for so long, some of which the audience is given the chance to see in a dark and disquieting flashback that Kreutzer cleverly interjects during the movie's second act. Perhaps, despite the less intimate nature of their relationship, that's why Kreutzer herself was so inclined to believe the male lead of her previous film (" Corsage ") when he privately disputed the rumors that he was guilty of similar crimes."
A musician in Munich plays a cover song at home when her Austrian husband returns in panic and they relocate to the German countryside. Authorities soon arrive with a warrant for his arrest, and she must go to a police station floor designated for child porn to learn details. As she processes rage, terror, and self-protective doubt, she wonders whether her son’s father could harm other children or even their own child. The story examines how quickly relationships and feelings can shift when facts lag behind urgent questions. It emphasizes that pedophilia has no off switch and that love also cannot be turned off, leaving emotional consequences that persist.
Read at IndieWire
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]