I was moved and impressed by this movie. It describes the gradual immersion of an average French family within the practices and norms of a Roman Catholic charismatic community. A community of zealots belonging to the fringes of the established Church which exercises strict control over all aspects of their members life from dress and behavior to sexuality and finance.
The eldest daughter of the family, a rebellious and strong-willed teenager questions the authority the sect exercises over her parents and siblings and is responsible for the final catharsis.
The movie portrays admirably the everyday life within the community, its rites, songs and prayers and the contradiction of its value-system with that of mainstream French society, acutely felt by the teenage daughter in opposition to her fellow pupils at high-school.
The control of the community over the sexuality of its members goes along with the teachings of the official Catholic Church and is no news for those accustomed with Christian sexual mores. Almost all branches of Christianity profess an ascetic morality in dire contrast with the loose sexual mores of contemporary hedonistic and consumerist society. You do not need to be an enclosed charismatic community to preach the need to control the sexual impulse you just have to be Christian. The punishment of theft is also an aspect of civil society and the secular French Republic. It is not an originality of charismatic communities.
In order to prove that the community is flawed the director chooses the rather facile stratagem to make the eldest daughter witness the sexual abuse of one of her younger brothers by a male member of the community. This event acts as a catalyst for the plot since the girl tells the police about it and all the nuances and subtleties are demolished in the final scene.
I think this was an abrupt way to end the movie since it is different to be eccentric, counter-cultural and different from the average norm compared to being criminal.
As the American conservative intellectual Rod Dreher has stated in his book The Benedict Option being a practising Christian in the West is by definition a counter-cultural choice. Being different, antiquated and naive is not the same with being a community that fosters child-abuse. Of course the recent findings of Ciase, the French acronym for the Independent Committee for sexual abuses in the Church have proved that after the family the Church is the second social institution where sexual abuse occurs more commonly.
The actors play their roles convincingly and ably and even the parents who are under the spell of the Sheperd, the leader of the charismatic community are not portrayed in black and white at least in the beginning.
The director of this movie lived herself from eight to eighteen within the confines of such a community and speaks from experience.
The Charismatic Renewal inspired by Protestant examples provided the mainstream Catholic Church with many communities eager to live the faith more authentically compared with the lukewarm cafeteria Catholicism of mainstream religious culture. Sometimes their zeal led to excesses.
Surely the predominant secular culture in the West allows for more sexual freedom and self-expression than serious religious commitment. France is an obvious example since it is one of the most secularized societies in the EU. Even my native Greece which even before the sixties and seventies experienced the phenomenon of religious fraternities eager to live the faith in a more serious manner than allowed by the mainstream has succumbed to the lure of secular post-modernity.
The film correctly criticizes the narrow horizons and thought control of enclosed charismatic communities. But if one is honest one has to admitt that modern western culture does not have a problem solely with enclosed charismatic communities, it has a problem with the Faith as such.
The eldest daughter of the family, a rebellious and strong-willed teenager questions the authority the sect exercises over her parents and siblings and is responsible for the final catharsis.
The movie portrays admirably the everyday life within the community, its rites, songs and prayers and the contradiction of its value-system with that of mainstream French society, acutely felt by the teenage daughter in opposition to her fellow pupils at high-school.
The control of the community over the sexuality of its members goes along with the teachings of the official Catholic Church and is no news for those accustomed with Christian sexual mores. Almost all branches of Christianity profess an ascetic morality in dire contrast with the loose sexual mores of contemporary hedonistic and consumerist society. You do not need to be an enclosed charismatic community to preach the need to control the sexual impulse you just have to be Christian. The punishment of theft is also an aspect of civil society and the secular French Republic. It is not an originality of charismatic communities.
In order to prove that the community is flawed the director chooses the rather facile stratagem to make the eldest daughter witness the sexual abuse of one of her younger brothers by a male member of the community. This event acts as a catalyst for the plot since the girl tells the police about it and all the nuances and subtleties are demolished in the final scene.
I think this was an abrupt way to end the movie since it is different to be eccentric, counter-cultural and different from the average norm compared to being criminal.
As the American conservative intellectual Rod Dreher has stated in his book The Benedict Option being a practising Christian in the West is by definition a counter-cultural choice. Being different, antiquated and naive is not the same with being a community that fosters child-abuse. Of course the recent findings of Ciase, the French acronym for the Independent Committee for sexual abuses in the Church have proved that after the family the Church is the second social institution where sexual abuse occurs more commonly.
The actors play their roles convincingly and ably and even the parents who are under the spell of the Sheperd, the leader of the charismatic community are not portrayed in black and white at least in the beginning.
The director of this movie lived herself from eight to eighteen within the confines of such a community and speaks from experience.
The Charismatic Renewal inspired by Protestant examples provided the mainstream Catholic Church with many communities eager to live the faith more authentically compared with the lukewarm cafeteria Catholicism of mainstream religious culture. Sometimes their zeal led to excesses.
Surely the predominant secular culture in the West allows for more sexual freedom and self-expression than serious religious commitment. France is an obvious example since it is one of the most secularized societies in the EU. Even my native Greece which even before the sixties and seventies experienced the phenomenon of religious fraternities eager to live the faith in a more serious manner than allowed by the mainstream has succumbed to the lure of secular post-modernity.
The film correctly criticizes the narrow horizons and thought control of enclosed charismatic communities. But if one is honest one has to admitt that modern western culture does not have a problem solely with enclosed charismatic communities, it has a problem with the Faith as such.