Review: By the Grace of God Is a Sobering Look at a Church Abuse Trial

François Ozon’s By the Grace of God is based on the true events surrounding the Catholic Church’s coverup of a sex abuse scandal and the efforts of a group of adult survivors to bring the pedophile priest to justice. The film depicts the men of this group gradually coming together, and through an epistolary device: Letter exchanges between the men, and between the men and the church, are read in voiceover as the audience follows their pursuit of justice. After forming their association, the men weaponize archives and the media to force their abuser into the open and finally defeat him. The structure is almost strangely reminiscent of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, a novel made up of letters and transcriptions that tracks the progress of a group that also comes together to track down a monster.

Though able to recognize the depravity of his deeds and willing to confront his victims, Father Bernard Preynat (Bernard Verley) seems almost willfully blind to the extent to which he’s caused these men pain. When the priest is confronted at different points in By the Grace of God by Alexandre (Melvil Poupaud) and Emmanuel (Swann Arlaud), his apparent contrition can be disarming. Ozon keeps the camera close to the priest’s face, so we can see his eyes dart around as he alternates between meeting the gaze of his accuser and avoiding it. In the moment, Preynat is almost sympathetic. But the man refuses to admit full responsibility for his actions, often hiding behind the church or pathology. He insists that he’s gripped by a disease, and that he informed his superiors of it—as if he had no agency in the matter.

Throughout By the Grace of God, Ozon assiduously avoids sensationalism, compiling the story with an almost journalistic sobriety. Ozon’s films often explore the intersections of fiction and reality, but here the filmmaker is as rigidly dedicated to the truth as his justice-seeking protagonists. Each section of the film homes in on one of Preynat’s victims—Alexandre, François (Denis Ménochet), and Emmanuel—diving into the specifics and, crucially, the differences in how each man was affected by their molestation, and by his decision to speak out. Alexandre remains committed to the Catholic church, and has the unflagging support of his wife and five children. The atheistic François, meanwhile, adopts a more vengeful stance, and is uninterested in sparing the church from his wrath. As for Emmanuel, he’s the most apparently damaged of the group, both mentally and physically. His molestation resulted in a deformity, and his inability to manage his trauma is exteriorized in angry outbursts.

As the three men, spurred on by Alexandre’s initial dogged pursuit of accountability within the church, seek out other survivors to build a case against Preynat, they’re stymied by Cardinal Philippe Barbarin (François Marthouret), the archbishop of Lyon. Barbarin is the embodiment of the church’s institutional hypocrisy, hiding behind pious phrases and expressions of sympathy while continuing to cover for child abuses. In one notable scene, he points to a wall and the famous photograph of a frightened boy in the Warsaw Ghetto surrounded by Nazis. Ozon lets the camera linger on the image, evoking not only the irony of Barbarin’s performed care for a child’s welfare, but also the history of another of the church’s major moral failings: its silence while Europe’s Jews were being rounded up and sent to concentration camps.

Repeatedly, Barbarin and other members of the local church hierarchy rely on their dogma’s emphasis on forgiveness as a shield, deflecting the men’s complaints by urging them to forgive Preyart and to find inner peace through God. As the atheist in the group, François naturally has no patience for smoke and mirrors, but even the devout Alexandre recognizes this strategy of indirect disavowal for what it is. And it’s here that one gets the sense that By the Grace of God might have benefited from injecting its principal characters with a little bit more self-doubt after their initial connection: Once decided upon their course of action, they pursue it with little friction, calmly discussing strategy and being open about their feelings.

Ozon undoubtedly draws a detailed picture of a complex process—the collective battle against an intractable institution—and without indulging in melodrama. But his dialogue can veer toward a pedagogical rhetoric, and at times By the Grace of God suggests an NBC “The More You Know” spot. At one point, when consulting with a priest who mentions pedophilia and homosexuality in the same breath, Alexandre dispassionately outlines to the man why the two aren’t equivalent. In the moment, one almost expects Alexandre to turn to the camera and remind us that he exists as much for the man’s edification as he does for our own.