Gentle Monster, the latest work of Austrian auteur Marie Kreutzer, had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival late on Friday night. The dark and disturbing drama, which is playing in competition at the fest, was enthusiastically cheered by the audience inside the Grand Théâtre Lumière, especially when its leading lady, Léa Seydoux, was shown on the screen. Indeed, the film’s standing ovation clocked in at six minutes, but only came to an end because Kreutzer accepted a microphone and began addressing attendees; I suspect that, if not interrupted, it would have gone on for quite a bit longer.
The subject matter of the film is heavy, to be sure: a woman (Seydoux) who is happily married and the mother of a young child has her life upended when — spoiler alert — the authorities arrest her husband (Laurence Rupp) for possession and distribution of child pornography. It’s not immediately clear if her husband was involved in the material’s production and/or if their own child was among those exploited, but the woman knows that her life will never return to the way it was before. So, while she figures out her next steps, and while the investigation into her husband unfolds under the oversight of a young policewoman (Elsa Kühn) with her own familial problems, she and her child take up temporary refuge in the home of her mother (Catherine Deneuve).
Gentle Monster is among the strongest competition titles that have played so far at this year’s fest, and it seems likely to factor in to the best international feature Oscar — though how, exactly, remains unclear. Movie stars don’t come more French than Seydoux and Deneuve, but German is spoken more than French in this film, and, again, Kreutzer is from Austria and previously had another of her films, 2022’s Corsage, chosen to represent that country in the Oscar race. So it’s not totally clear to me which country might have the strongest claim on Gentle Monster.
Regardless of how that plays out, I would keep a close eye on Seydoux. The 40-year-old, who has been acting in films at an incredible pace for the last 20 years, is almost always excellent on screen, but often in films that aren’t as outstanding as she is, or are highly polarizing, or are such ensemble pieces that no individual gets much attention for them. But in Gentle Monster, she truly shines.
She certainly could win the best actress prize here in Cannes. (She and Adèle Exarchopoulos shared 2013’s Palme d’Or with their Blue Is the Warmest Color director Abdellatif Kechiche, but she has never been recognized individually for any of her many strong performances that have been unveiled here.) And, if Gentle Monster lands proper U.S. distribution out of the fest, it could also land her the first Oscar nomination of her impressive career. (Kate Winslet got a best actress nom for another film that dealt with paedophilia, 2006’s Little Children.)
