The opening scenes of this movie pulls you up sharp. On the screen there is a distraught young woman lying in a hospital bed hooked up to an oxygen machine and desperately pleading to the visitor we cannot see. She simply keeps begging ‘Bury them in Morocco. Tell their father, bury them in Morocco.’ And then it cuts away to an airport and we can just see four small coffins being loaded onto a plane. It stuns you into total silence. And immediately afterwards we see the same woman, obviously much younger, laughing and frolicking with her lover. This is the start of the story that we already know the ending off. Murielle is having an affair with Mounir her handsome Moroccan boyfriend who is so besotted with her, that he pops the question soon after they meet. He shares the house ……on the coast of France … with Andre a much older successful Doctor who is something of a father figure to him.
As much as Murielle tries, Andre seems completely disinterested in her, but he agrees that she should move in once the young couple are married. His wedding gift to them is a honeymoon trip which they insist they will only accept if he accompanies them, to which he acquiesces somewhat easily.
For years Andre has been looking after Mounir and his family ….. he even married his sister so that she could get French Residency …and so the young man is anxious to please his benefactor. So too does Murielle at first, and she succeeds when she gives birth to her first baby which Andre adores. She follows with a second one, and then a third which makes their living arrangements rather a tight fit. Murielle is not happy and neither are the men, by now also working together, who are also constantly snapping at each other.
A very unhappy Murielle finds herself pregnant for the fourth time and this dispels any misbelieving we may have had about the opening scene, as we now know who were in those coffins. Watching this ex school-teacher and rational young woman come so unhinged is tough to witness, and even though you know where this is heading, you are still not prepared for the ghastly impact of the final scenes.
The whole cataclysmic story is beautifully executed and watching how this perverse relationship between the two men should be ultimately responsible for this unspeakable tragedy is chilling. I’m shuddering at the thought of it just reliving it all again by reading my notes now!
Directed and co-written by Belgian filmmaker Joachim Lafosse whose somewhat brief but controversial resume includes ‘Private Lessons’ in 2008 about paedophilia which I absolutely loathed. This one however as tough as it is to view, should be seen, as it is a remarkable piece of work. The two men were played by Tahar Rahim and veteran Nils Arestrup who played a different ‘father and son’ dynamic in ‘A Prophet’ ….. they are equally as brilliant in both. It is however the performance of Émilie Dequenne as Murielle that has you gasping for breath at times …. it quite rightly won her a Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival.
How anything so bitterly sad as this could be so watchable may be hard to comprehend, but trust me it’s totally worth the risk. And instead of just Kleenex besides you that I recommend for tough movies, I would suggest a large glass of whisky too. Neat.
In US theaters now.
★★★★★★★★★★
