Some of you may have put on your list of good New Year’s resolutions to swap time-consuming entertainment quickly forgotten for movies with a capital C. An excellent resolution that you can put into practice starting with the very beautiful surprise of this beginning of the year:The sixth child.
The child in question is that of Franck and Meriem, a couple of very religious travelers who are already struggling to make ends meet. The news of a sixth baby is therefore not a joy for them. During Franck’s appearance in front of the judge, the two gypsies meet their perfect opposite: Julien and Anna, two lawyers who are unable to have children in one way or another. . Franck and Meriem’s faith means that they cannot bring themselves to have an abortion, but they cannot afford to keep the child either. They will therefore propose to this couple of “good people” to buy the future baby.
The discomfort does not let us go in this dramatic suspense signed by the Frenchman, trained at the Belgian school, Léopold Legrand. In December, the director and screenwriter, for whom this is his first feature film, confided in the pages of To have to on these two feminine “distresses” that he wanted to transpose to the screen without misery. Visibly inspired by the sober and down-to-earth style of the Dardennes, he offers us a social film with an incisive form close to the documentary, which twirls between the abrupt and the compassion. His plans go straight to the point, without frills, and are linked together, leaving no room for downtime.
Legrand nevertheless leaves time to time. There is a whole life in its temporal ellipses. The scenes he puts into images are only pivotal stages in the complex psychological journey of his characters. Or rather the psychological paths. Because it is indeed very distinct individualities that we discover and which split up. Literally. Franck, Meriem, Anna and Julien only rarely appear together in the image and coexist as opposites in a shot/reverse shot montage that carefully avoids close-ups.
Yet the emotional power is there. Contained by the characters or suggested by the director through, for example, a back that carries all the weight of the world or, to a devastating effect, through the rain that mixes with tears. Violent emotions are only shown bluntly when they are no longer containable, the modesty of the realization thus making them even more powerful.
Never intrusive thanks to this, Léopold Legrand describes to us with great sensitivity the hell of two mothers opposite to each other and the heartbreak of their husbands overwhelmed by events. No need for sleeve effects or any Hollywood bombast. The power of the writing affixed to a sober cinematic style makes all the effectiveness of the film. A confident writing with undeniable maturity. The acting, under Legrand’s measured direction, speaks louder than any dialogue he could have written. The interpretation of his cast of actors is simply stunning. Sara Giraudeau, in the role of Anna, serves us here one of the most beautiful performances of this year barely begun. How not to embrace the despair of this woman ready to do anything to become a mother?
Anna is a woman crushed by infertility and refusals to her adoption requests for whom the need for motherhood surpasses morality and has got the better of her bearings. Opposite, Meriem questions the concept of “good mother” by taking the risk of ending up in prison to offer a better future far from her to her sixth child. Their two sufferings transposed to the screen make us swallow our taste for judgment and shake our bearings. After the last scene, we no longer know what to think of this immoral act which comes to repair a crying injustice.
Yes, The sixth child explodes our moral certainties with a masterful hand. Stunning through and through, between actors in ecstasy, a brilliant script and an intelligent production, this first feature film by Léopold Legrand portends the best for the future.