A well-made film about dignity in the face of hypocrisy

Originally planned as a documentary, Grâce à Dieu [By the Grace of God] is a partly-fictionalised account of the case of Fr. Bernard Preynat and the formation of La Parole Libérée [known in English as Lift the Burden of Silence], an advocacy group for victims of childhood sexual abuse. Probably Ozon's most formally conventional work, with none of his usual visual panache, the film was modelled after Tom McCarthy's exceptional Spotlight (2015), which examined the Boston Globe's 2002 investigation into sexual abuse in the Boston Archdiocese going back decades. This comparison is important insofar as it speaks to Ozon's lack of formal gymnastics; in short, as with Spotlight, the conventional style is matched to the thematic seriousness, wherein neither director wants to run the risk of elements of the form distracting from the content (not that any visual or aural trickery would help either to tell their particular story). Grâce à Dieu, however, is not a Catholic-hit job; rather it depicts the institutional dissembling and prevarication as coming not necessarily from a place of evil, but from a desire to avoid another scandal. Nonetheless, the Church as depicted very much talks a lot about forgiveness and redemption, but seems to have very little understanding of justice or punishment. It's weighty stuff, and although it courts a narrative objectivity and stylistic restraint that often suggests a void of emotion, for the most part, this is undeniably powerful cinema.

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