Impeccably directed and acted movie--at some point I became afraid of the teenage girl having to act a role with some shots borderline to a child pornography--but, unlike much more nuanced Bad Tales, it is sociologically and psychologically unsatisfying. Of course, I wished for a happy ending, if only for the vindication of Emilie Bierre's and Marianne Farley's indomitable heroines, but suicide would also be explainable.
Whether provincial Quebec is in such a medieval state of consciousness that the null hypothesis in the case of a pregnant 13-year old girl, refusing to disclose who impregnated her, would not be that she was raped and that the rapist is threatening her or her family and not being investigated by police? Why loving and caring mother inexplicably refuses to go to the police and/or district attorney's office and leaves the whole case in care of a bumbling social worker doubling as a local DJ? That a local mayor, the rapist, is so powerful that he can assure silence of an entire town is perfectly believable--in the US leaders of religious sects sometimes control and intimidate the entire counties--but that mother is barely interested in uncovering the whole story and easily subscribes to the cockamamy suggestion that the mayor's adopted son is a culprit? That the mayor's childless wife does not notice his interest in underage girls and that mother of a victim and her best friend never communicate on that issue throughout all the rapturous event? If the director Jeanne Leblanc wanted to demonstrate that even well-intentioned people easily fall to the simplest and most convincing (or the least traumatic) version of events, she achieved that purpose. But that purpose is outside of cinematic story she so masterfully displayed.
