Chris Knipp
08-09-2019, 10:04 AM
FRANÇOIS OZON: BY THE GRACE OF GOD/GRACE À DIEU (2018)
http://www.chrisknipp.com/images/85h.jpg
Fighting the Church's protection of pedophiles in France
Francois Ozon’s new Grace à Dieu AKA By the Grace of God is a fascinating movie about a belated campaign to defrock a pedophile priest in Lyons, France, who abused dozens, maybe hundreds of boys. It is so absorbing because it gets so involved in each new important former victim who joins the group organizing to get him out of the priesthood and away from young boys, where the Church has allowed him to remain for the past 30 years. It’s more a leisurely study of a series individuals than a tract, though it’s about the slow local-building movement as well. It hovers around the question, why and how can the Catholic Church hide and enable all these pedophiles? By the Grace of God invites comparison with Tom McCarthy's Spotlight (http://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3212) and John N. Smith's two-part The Boys of St. Vincent (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106473/) as one of the finest movies ever made about this subject.
[The rest of the review will come back in October.]
By the Grace of God/Grace à Dieu, 137 mins., debuted at Angers Dec. 2018, also at the Paris Rendez-vous du Cinéma Français, and showed at Berlin (winning the Jury Prize), Istanbul and Hong Kong, opening in various French cities and in Brussels and Switzerland. Released theatrically in France Feb. 20, 2019, it received generally rave reviews (AlloCiné press rating 4.1 aggregating 34 critics), though some, like Cahiers, chided it as needlessly pedestrian. Its US release is Oct. 18, 2019
http://www.chrisknipp.com/images/85h.jpg
Fighting the Church's protection of pedophiles in France
Francois Ozon’s new Grace à Dieu AKA By the Grace of God is a fascinating movie about a belated campaign to defrock a pedophile priest in Lyons, France, who abused dozens, maybe hundreds of boys. It is so absorbing because it gets so involved in each new important former victim who joins the group organizing to get him out of the priesthood and away from young boys, where the Church has allowed him to remain for the past 30 years. It’s more a leisurely study of a series individuals than a tract, though it’s about the slow local-building movement as well. It hovers around the question, why and how can the Catholic Church hide and enable all these pedophiles? By the Grace of God invites comparison with Tom McCarthy's Spotlight (http://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3212) and John N. Smith's two-part The Boys of St. Vincent (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106473/) as one of the finest movies ever made about this subject.
[The rest of the review will come back in October.]
By the Grace of God/Grace à Dieu, 137 mins., debuted at Angers Dec. 2018, also at the Paris Rendez-vous du Cinéma Français, and showed at Berlin (winning the Jury Prize), Istanbul and Hong Kong, opening in various French cities and in Brussels and Switzerland. Released theatrically in France Feb. 20, 2019, it received generally rave reviews (AlloCiné press rating 4.1 aggregating 34 critics), though some, like Cahiers, chided it as needlessly pedestrian. Its US release is Oct. 18, 2019