The story of the film is derived from the short film "Lost at the End" by director Xavier Legrand. "Lost at the End" tells the story of Miriam, who works in a supermarket, being abused by her husband and escaped with her two children with the help of her colleagues. As a continuation of the short film, "Guardianship" tells the story of the two people's struggle for child custody after their divorce.
At the same time, it is also telling us that divorce is not the end of domestic violence.
The film opens with a courtroom scene against Maimang, in which Miriam must fight for custody of her 11-year-old son Julian in order to legally take away the child.
Although the younger son did not come to the scene, the testimony has been recorded, and the meaning of each sentence is clear: I don't want to see my dad again.
"I dare not play outside because we are all afraid of that person
Grandpa would yell at that person every time, it's not good for him
I'm worried about mom because he will only hurt her
He doesn't deserve to be my dad and I'm glad they got divorced"
The eldest daughter, Josephine, provided medical records showing that she had been beaten by her father because she skipped class to go on a date. Mother Miriam presented the scene of the violence in a few words. Her face was calm, but there was still a trace of panic passing by. But for Miriam's accusation, Antoine gave a different rhetoric-
"The beating of the daughter was wronged. The daughter sprained her wrist in the gym. The son's testimony may have been forced to write down, and it does not represent the true relationship between father and son."
Who the hell is lying?
In this small hearing, the husband and wife disagreed, and it was difficult for even the judge to distinguish the truth from the false.
How could Antoine, who is usually harmless to humans and animals, be a villain with violent tendencies? The heavy smokescreen that the director set up at the beginning is to tell the audience that most domestic abusers are difficult to identify.
Their feelings for their family members are strong, they feel guilty, they try to be rational, and there are moments when the truth is revealed.
But domestic violence, there are only zero and countless times.
Because of fear of domestic violence, Miriam moved with her children and avoided Antoine, but Miriam's refusal to communicate intensified the conflict and made Antoine even more broken.
A closed family environment is aphasia and is more prone to foster violence, and must turn to outside forces.
In Xu Anhua's "Night and Fog in Tianshui Wai", his wife Wang Xiaoling once sought shelter from the outside world. Was she finally saved?
Her husband Li Sen killed her anyway.
Because the intervention of the outside world did not make him fearful, it only increased the anger in his heart. Cruelty is also here. Every antidote you find for domestic violence may bring unbearable side effects.
But precisely because it is difficult to cure, we have to try again and again.
In addition, there is a detail that cannot be ignored in the film. The director tries to warn the audience that violence is hereditary .
In the film, the impending table conflict between Antoine and his father suggests to the audience that Antoine was also a victim of domestic violence as a child.
When he grew up, he in turn took revenge on his father and inadvertently passed it on to his children.
We cannot predict what will happen to children in such a growing environment, but we cannot deny that the impact of such a violent environment is huge.
The last 15 minutes of the film are the essence of the whole film, making people hold their breath and sweat their palms.
First, there was a rush of doorbell, which woke up the mother and son who were asleep in the middle of the night. Then came the sound of my father kicking the door fiercely. While kicking the door, he shouted angrily, "Bitch, open the door for Lao Tzu" . It was also creepy across the screen.
Immediately afterwards, with a gunshot, the father punched a hole in the door with a shotgun, and the younger son instantly had tinnitus and cried out, "Mom, I can't hear you."
Arrange for the police officer who dispatched the police, the father who is about to break into the house, and the mother and son who are at a loss to be cross-edited in the three spaces to create a tense and urgent atmosphere.
And with the sound of footsteps getting closer, the mother and son were hiding in the bathtub, which made the audience so nervous that they didn't dare to breathe...
This "silence scene" is exactly the same as the horror film "A Quiet Place" not long ago!
But unlike A Quiet Place, the villains are not virtual monsters, but real humans.
Although the mother in the movie was finally saved, in reality, countless tragedies are happening:
According to statistics, among the causes of death among women in my country, domestic violence accounts for about 40% of the deaths, and the number of suicides due to domestic violence is as high as 94,200 every year.
In order to reduce such tragedies, we can no longer remain silent.
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