Custody
Directed by Xavier Legrand
Starring Lea Drucker, Denis Menochet, Thomas Gioria, Mathilde Auneveux
[rating: 5/5]
Reviewed by Michael Dalton
As fans wait with bated breath for the long-awaited return of Michael Myers, the knife-wielding stalker of Halloween, Xavier Legrand’s new film Custody has arrived, featuring another monster, a much more grounded one. In this domestic thriller that tells the story of a family in turmoil, violence is always waiting just offscreen and from the minute we meet Antoine (Denis Menochet), we cannot just see it, we can feel it. A bear of a man with goldfish eyes, thin lips, and the build of a wrestler, here is a beast not to be trifled with. We come into this family’s story after violence has already entered their lives. His wife Miriam (Lea Drucker), who he has physically abused, is unnerved just being in the same room as him, their vulnerable son Julien (Thomas Gioria) refers to him only as “that man”, and their daughter Josephine (Mathilde Auneveux), who felt the painful brunt of his temper after he disapproved of her choice of boyfriend, is luckily mature enough to make her own decisions about seeing him. Julien is not so lucky.
The opening scene where the couple, their lawyers, and a judge (Saadia Bentaieb) discuss Antoine’s access to the child demonstrates he is at the mercy of the court (the thrust of the film is how the system fails children). The judge buys Antoine’s heartfelt story that he changed his job and address to be closer to the family that now shuns him and so we’re given a series of episodes where the child, clearly terrified, is forced to spend time with his father. Antoine clearly loves him. On their first weekend together, he greets the child with a tender embrace. You can see the passion and love he has for Julien. It shouldn’t be this way but it is. It doesn’t take long for those weekends to turn unpleasant. Antoine loses his temper in his parents’ home and they throw him out. He discovers his wife has moved yet again and not alerted him to his family’s new address, he verbally abuses the child, threatens his wife, and then all hell breaks loose.
Legrand (who won the Venice Film Festival’s Silver Lion for directing) doesn’t reach for the heights of melodrama (such is the emotional punch of the story he doesn’t need to) but pushes the pieces together with care and an unflinching camera. Curiously, he initially tries to play with our expectations and have us wondering who is telling the truth. Is Miriam lying in an effort to keep the children? Is Antoine really the monster she’s painted him to be? One look at Julien’s reaction to his father’s presence solves the mystery. Legrand resists the usual grandstanding (were this an American film we would’ve endured private meltdown scenes) and lets happier scenes linger just long enough to let us catch our breath. Uncomfortably intimate, this is finally the story of a mother and her children who can’t find peace or freedom. In life, one would think the all-powerful judge would interview the child. It is inexplicable that she doesn’t. Her decision will haunt the child for the rest of his life. Harsh, honest and direct, Custody is like a ticking timebomb.
National Domestic and Family Violence Counselling Service: 1800 737 732
