Gentle Monster

A harrowing portrait of the human toll of such depravity, it’s as timely as it is heart-wrenching.

Though Kreutzer never lets any adult character off the moral hook . . . she also refuses to shade these relationships with outright antagonism. Instead, they are all appraising one another, weighing others’ actions to balance their own ethical scales, and in doing so, trying to better understand themselves. That’s the same reason we turn to art.

Like a photograph developing in a bath of chemicals, Kreutzer’s strategies and themes slowly become clearer, and the scene isn’t pretty.

For all its measuredness, Gentle Monster is a merciless film, not so much to the viewers but its titular character––a gesture some may deem exaggerated, yet there is a tenderness that steers Kreutzer’s script away from revenge, humiliation, or brutal punishment. For its taboo subject matter, this already says a lot.

Seydoux’s gut-wrenching performance at the center of Gentle Monster, combined with a sensitive approach to horrifying subject matter, makes a tough watch equally compelling.

Gentle Monster is a meticulously plausible depiction of the dissolution of a family under the most trust-annihilating of circumstances, but that is all it is.

Gentle Monster is perhaps a bit two striated in its examination of these two women and their eventual choices.