Gentle Monster is one of those films I don't want to write about. In fact, I'd love nothing more than to forget it exists the moment I turn away from it.
It features some good performances, and Marie Kreutzer is a terrific filmmaker. But it's also maddeningly shallow, unfocused, and often such an emotionally inert portrait of a horrific topic that navigating criticism of it is exhausting. It stresses sensationalism and aggressive emotional responses, yet it isn't worthy of either.
Léa Seydoux plays Marie, who discovers her husband is the titular monster. After a brief glimpse into their seemingly idyllic life, he is arrested for unspeakable crimes, some of which have happened under Marie's nose, and could potentially affect their son. In an instant, her world falls apart, even as she tries to piece it back together against all better judgment.
As the mountains of evidence begin to pile up, Marie's husband spins multiple excuses for his actions. First, he claims he was making a documentary. Then, he sold horrific material to fund their new beginning as a family. Each one of the lies sounds more ridiculous than the last one, and it's hard to watch Marie attempt to reconcile and negotiate them into reality one after another.
Alongside this is the story of a cop, Elsa (Jella Haase), who cares for her aging father. He is struggling with dementia, and part of it causes him to act erratically and dangerously towards others – especially his nurse, who calls Elsa in a panic after one such incident. Each time, Elsa creates excuses for her father, demanding understanding from those affected, even as she pursues others with unforgiving intensity.
If at this point you're asking why Kreutzer contrasts these scenarios, you're about to have a bad time. One of the worst missteps that Gentle Monsters takes is the incomprehensibly clumsy attempt at drawing parallels between its two main stories. It wants to discuss the nature of love, blindness, forgiveness, and numerous other matters that each alone could be the sole subject of the film. Yet they're all here, and each complexity is boiled down to a template that Kreutzer refuses to engage with beyond the initial setup.
Seydoux and Haase are tremendous in their parts, there's no question about that. Without their work, Gentle Monster would fall apart much faster than it already does. The French icon Catherine Deneuve appears in a brief cameo, yet she delivers one of the most heartbreaking and honest performances in her career with just minutes of screentime. It reminds us why she's one of the greats.
Yet the film's nihilism is overbearing, and it keeps ramping up the horrors with such a pace that Seydoux can do little with her part but hyperventilate and scream. When her mother suggests she speak to someone about the matter, she waves her off with a distinctly French response: "I will speak to my piano."
Kreutzer keeps everything at a physical and emotional distance, often framing the action through doorways and across the yard, as if we were seeing something we shouldn't. There's a clinical coldness to the proceedings, which makes the rare moments of intimacy feel like jump scares in a horror film.
I appreciate the experimentation, yet the results feel more like parlor tricks. They're the work of a filmmaker who knows they can toy with their audience, but doesn't stop to think if they should. Especially with material as horrifying as this.
