{"id":962616,"date":"2026-05-15T23:57:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T23:57:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/962616\/"},"modified":"2026-05-15T23:57:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T23:57:18","slug":"gentle-monster-review-lea-seydoux-in-unsettling-marie-kreutzer-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/962616\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Gentle Monster’ Review: L\u00e9a Seydoux in Unsettling Marie Kreutzer Film"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tTackling a subject close to home for writer-director Marie Kreutzer<\/a>, Gentle Monster examines the fallout when Philip Weiss (Laurence Rupp) \u2014 a middle-class Austrian documentary maker, father and beloved husband \u2014 is accused of watching, distributing and maybe even making child pornography. <\/p>\n

\n\tKreutzer\u2019s colleague, the actor Florian Teichtmeister who appeared in her acclaimed feature Corsage<\/a>, was caught up in a similar case, resulting in his being sentenced to two years in prison. But instead of examining the psychology of accused men, Kreutzer smartly elects to tell the story largely through the eyes of his bewildered French wife Lucy, played by L\u00e9a Seydoux in a performance that\u2019s all raw nerves \u2014 steely, vulnerable, angry and broken at once.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tGentle Monster\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tThe Bottom Line<\/p>\n

\tA tricky topic handled gracefully.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tVenue: <\/strong>Cannes Film Festival (Competition)
Cast:<\/strong> L\u00e9a Seydoux, Laurence Rupp, Jella Haase, Malo Blanchet, Anton Rubtsov, Nils Strunk, Catherine Deneuve, Patrycja Zi\u00f3\u0142kowska
Director\/screenwriter:<\/strong> Marie Kreutzer
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t1 hour 55 minutes\n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\tKreutzer\u2019s script strives to create a complex view of the many ways people react when they\u2019re involved in situations like this, and how guilt and innocence are never entirely cut and dried. That\u2019s especially clear with a subplot \u2014 not entirely necessary, but you can see why Kreutzer thought it was \u2014 about the German policewoman (Jella Haase) who is investigating Philip\u2019s case and has her own problems with a difficult, possibly monstrous man at home. Gentle Monster\u2018s shaded grey morality will frustrate some viewers and draw applause from others; either way, it will provoke lively debates after screenings, which won\u2019t hurt prospects after it debuts in Cannes<\/a>\u2018 competition.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe nuclear family at the heart of the story are first met living in the rustic splendor of the German countryside, in a scruffy, characterful house far bigger than this family of three \u2014 Philip, Lucy and their six- or seven-year-old son Johnny (Malo Blanchet) \u2014 obviously needs. While they have done up Johnny\u2019s room and put together a trampoline in the backyard for him, a test of parental commitment if ever there was one, Philip and Lucy are still sleeping on a mattress on the floor, having not gotten round to buying a proper bed yet. But that doesn\u2019t stop them from having energetic, tellingly choreographed sex while Johnny is at school or asleep, scenes filmed with a woozy sensuality. (DP Judith Kaufmann, who also shot Corsage, lights actors, especially creamy-skinned Seydoux, beautifully.)<\/p>\n

\n\tThere are subtle hints that Philip\u2019s career isn\u2019t going great at the moment. Lucy\u2019s concerts feature her playing piano and singing off-kilter interpretations of pop songs usually performed or written by men like The Cure\u2019s \u201cBoys Don\u2019t Cry\u201d or George Michael\u2019s \u201cFreedom\u201d (arranged by mononymic singer-songwriter Camille, who also provides non-source soundtrack songs), and the shows aren\u2019t exactly making bank. Money, however, doesn\u2019t seem to be the top priority in this trilingual household, where the parents sometimes talk to each other in English and in their native tongues to Johnny.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt one point, Lucy\u2019s very French, somewhat distant mother Eloise (Catherine Deneuve, impactful in her few scenes) observes that Lucy has done the one thing that\u2019s worse for a female artist than having children, and that\u2019s moving to the countryside. When the film pivots toward the big reveal of the story, it becomes painfully clear what she means. Lucy is very isolated in this superficially tranquil domestic setting, separated from friends, far from her mother, dependent on Philip, and not even entirely fluent in German. <\/p>\n

\n\tThat seclusion becomes particularly problematic when one day the police show up at their door with warrants to take away all of Philip\u2019s computers and hard drives. They arrest him for distributing child pornography in a dark web online chat group, where he goes by the handle GentleMonster_87, and suddenly Lucy has to contact his lawyer Lukas (Nils Strunk) and deal with the legal ramifications, as well as all the childcare while shielding Johnny and both her own and Philip\u2019s family from the truth.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut what exactly is the truth? Certainly Lucy doesn\u2019t know, although she\u2019s keen to believe Philip\u2019s initial protestations of innocence, unable to accept that the sweet, droopy guy she\u2019s been in love with for years might also be GentleMonster. Is that version of Philip capable of sharing footage of pre-adolescent children being violated online, as Detective Elsa K\u00fchn (Haase) claims? <\/p>\n

\n\tBy slow degrees, Philip\u2019s story shifts to accommodate the incontrovertible evidence of IP addresses and deciphered cryptography and Lucy struggles to keep up, let alone understand. Like a photograph developing in a bath of chemicals, Kreutzer\u2019s strategies and themes slowly become clearer, and the scene isn\u2019t pretty. Guilt is a metastatic entity here that spreads among nearly everyone connected to Philip and Lucy. Even Det. K\u00fchn is not above blame. Her imperious, elderly father Herrmann (Sylvester Groth) has become disinhibited by dementia and is prone to touching his female caretaker (Patrycja Zi\u00f3\u0142kowska ) inappropriately, a problem Elsa doesn\u2019t want to face any more than Lucy does.<\/p>\n

\n\tUlrike Kofler\u2019s editing deftly draws out the uncomfortable parallels here, and there are other felicitous touches that underscore repetition and change, like twinned scenes where Lucy and Philip both chase after one another in fast-moving cars at different points in the story. Meanwhile, Kaufmann and her team use long, handheld takes holding close usually on Seydoux\u2019s face to create an in-the-moment urgency when needed. The craftsmanship Kreutzer displayed in Corsage is once again much in evidence in this contemporary story that revolves, like Corsage, around a woman trapped in a difficult marriage with few options no matter how much she bleeds herself dry for love, to paraphrase Coldplay\u2019s \u201cYellow,\u201d sung by Camille over the closing credits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tackling a subject close to home for writer-director Marie Kreutzer, Gentle Monster examines the fallout when Philip Weiss…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":962617,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3935],"tags":[5839,249591,6639,267274,77,522,268933,3943,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-962616","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-cannes","9":"tag-cannes-2026","10":"tag-cannes-film-festival","11":"tag-cannes-film-festival-reviews","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-international","14":"tag-lea-seydoux","15":"tag-movies","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116581305509381554","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=962616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/962617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=962616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=962616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=962616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}