LONDON (ENGLAND)
The Guardian
October 13, 2019
By Kim Willsher
[With English-subtitled trailer.]
The director’s new film, By the Grace of God, retells the story of a paedophile priest. Ozon reveals how the victims’ stories unlocked his own painful memory
For most film directors, the nail-biting action unfolds on screen. Not, however, for François Ozon. The theatrics over his latest film played out in the French courts as he fought a last-minute attempt to stop it being released and found himself at the centre of a legal and national controversy. Today, Ozon can almost but not quite laugh about his starring role in the off-screen drama that earlier this year came perilously close to having his €5.9m (£5.2m) film By the Grace of God – the story of a real-life scandal involving a paedophile priest – canned.
“I suppose I was naive to think there wouldn’t be attempts to stop it coming out,” he says. “There was huge tension over the court case and we really didn’t know if the film could be released. The judgment was on the Tuesday; the film was due out on the Wednesday. We only knew the decision the night before.
“There were two court cases, but each time there has been legal action the judges have found in our favour. Fortunately.”
Even for Ozon, who is known for zigzagging across cinematic genres – farce, horror, comedy, psychosexual – By the Grace of God is a departure from style, a dramatised retelling of the story of the victims of Bernard Preynat, a former Catholic priest in the city of Lyon who is believed to have abused 70 children over three decades.
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