We were fooled. This is the feeling that it is possible to feel after leaving the room. While it was legitimate to expect a social drama, Xavier Legrand gradually managed to transform his film into a thriller, or even a horror film. Thus inventing a new kind of horror film: the social horror film.
The plot? The story of a divorced couple, the Bessons (one wonders if Xavier Legrand does not have a tooth against Luc Besson) who compete for custody of their children. The problem is that the children refuse to see their fathers, a violent man who mistreats his family.
Until the Guard is a naturalistic film in essence. Filmed with a hand-held camera, in a rural area such as there are so many in France, Xavier Legrand's first feature film is screaming truth. And talent. First of all, that of its director who continues on the bases of his short film Before everything is lost, caesarized in 2014. He takes the same characters and the same actors, and transforms his clever game of cat and mouse in a supermarket, into a bastard offspring from a threesome shot between Kramer against Kramer, The Night of the Hunter and The Shining, an avowed reference of the filmmaker. He makes several daring choices, starting with the almost total absence of music except for a party scene, shot in sequence shot. Legrand manages to integrate an almost Hitchcockian suspense before ending with a breathtaking climax, the film tipping into pure horror thanks to a scene that will recall, once again, The Shining (and obviously the Three Little Pigs).
The talent is also that of the actors, all excellent. Starting with Denis Ménochet, giving the impression of being a misunderstood teddy bear at first, before showing all the madness of the character; An interpretation that makes it possible to make human this terrifying character, who manages in spite of us to move us. A scene of argument between him and his father suggests that he too was not well treated by his parents, which raises some questions about the future of the couple's two children. As for Léa Drucker, she is absolutely amazing and impressive as a battered woman who, although terrified, manages to stand up to her (ex) husband.
Gradually tipping into fear, Until the Guard is a film that plunges the viewer into a slow nightmare that provokes in the public, horror, the real one. First of all, very nuanced, because although we are suspicious of the father, there is always a doubt about the behavior of the mother, who does not obey the instructions of the judge. The tension gradually rises thanks to the excesses of anger of the father, more and more violent; A father who remains convinced that he has changed. Xavier Legrand's film has the merit of not explaining excessively the past of the characters, thus avoiding the psychoanalysis of its characters. Leaving a lot of shadows and off-screens. Which brings us to one of the film's problematic points. Indeed, the subplot of the couple of the girl Besson, is clearly elucidated and lacks precision. Another flaw in the film is that by playing the card of a gradually rising fear, Legrand takes the risk of making it difficult for his viewer to enter his work. In addition, the film remains far too dependent on its double climax (the birthday party scene, and the final scene), the filmmaker seeming to bet everything on it.
Nevertheless, the film remains an impressive success, which deserves by far its silver lion in Venice. Offering a rather rare experience in the cinema (to scare with a social film à la Dardenne), Xavier Legrand comes out like a very big one. And proves to us, for those who need to prove it, that no matter how far the imagination may go, it can never be as frightening as reality.
