Cinema Holds a Harsh Mirror to Reality in Xavier Legrand's "Jusqu'à la garde"

In this unconventional custody-battle film, Miriam struggles to definitively sever her ties from her abusive ex-husband, who demands joint custody of their son Julien when his job is transferred to the same town where Miriam is now living. The film’s opening sequence begins during the custody hearing, with Miriam insisting on Antoine’s history of domestic abuse, as he plays the “standup father” who has been coldly and unjustly cut off from his son. Ignoring Miriam’s pleas, the court grants Antoine’s request, causing a vicious cycle of abuse to recommence as he uses and manipulates their son to get to her.

Custody is the sequel to Legrand’s previous short Just Before Losing Everything (2013), which follows Miriam as she plots her initial escape from Antoine at her workplace, prior to the divorce. Like Custody, it is intensely observational and unvarnished in its approach, crafting an atmosphere of claustrophobic terror that communicates the trauma of Miriam’s ordeal. Legrand made the decision to eliminate music from the soundtrack, wanting to avoid extra-diegetic emotional manipulation of the audience and attune them instead to the subtler sounds of terror that make up the film’s reality: the turning of keys in locks, the sound of Antoine’s car or footsteps approaching, the sound of Miriam’s panicked breathing.

Custody’s cold color palette, no-exit sensibility, and mix of social drama and thriller genres in some ways recall the asphyxiating tension of Michael Haneke’s films, while replacing the latter’s sociopathic playfulness with dead-serious concern. “Some court decisions can lead families into terrifying situations,” said Legrand. “The question for me was how to move from the first image of the film (which is in the office of a family court judge) to the last image that is in a bathtub (where Miriam and her son are hiding as an armed Antoine tries to break down the door.)”[1] Legrand also spent a lot of time with the actors ensuring that they avoided clichés around the topic of domestic violence and that they captured its flagrant yet defining contradiction, which is that the abusive husband is the one constantly casting himself as the victim, while the woman is made to feel guilt-ridden. “Antoine is a man of day, and there are many,” Legrand said. “These men are in denial about their violence. Not knowing how to control himself, he controls others and manipulates them. His virile anguish at losing the woman he considers his own pushes him to the extreme.”[2] The film’s original title in French Jusqu’à la garde, while literally translating to “until custody” is also a phrase used to mean “until the extreme.”

Legrand has spent a long time researching the issue of domestic abuse in France, where every two and a half days, a woman is killed by her husband or partner, usually in the wake of a divorce. He crafted Miriam’s story out of numerous testimonies he gathered, along with information he gleaned from attending conciliation hearings and talking with family-affairs judges. Domestic abuse cases, Legrand writes, are frequently framed in the French media as “crimes of passion,” in which the woman “pushed her ex-husband to the limit.”[3] The sensationalizing of such cases has a way of rendering them “out of the ordinary” in a way that is completely contradicted by the actual disturbing commonness of such violence.

Beyond such distortions, moreover, are the insidious layers of denial and secrecy, as domestic violence happens in private settings where lack of intervention on the part of neighbors or even friends is morally rationalized as not meddling in others’ personal affairs. Legrand has said that one of the major problems in France’s public awareness campaigns on domestic abuse is that they are almost exclusively directed at women and their status as potential victims, as opposed to seeking ways of combatting and alleviating violent tendencies in men.[4] In reflecting on the socially transformative potential of his work, Legrand described cinema’s capacity to act as a “harsh mirror” that “shows the world as it really is,” perhaps not able to intervene directly in reality but able to effect important shifts in perspective and awareness that can lead to concrete change.[5]

[1] Arabian, Alex. “Custody: Filmmaker Xavier Legrand Talks About his Masterful Domestic Violence Drama,” The Playlist, July 13, 2018. [2] Chang, Kee. “Q&A with Xavier Legrand,” Anthem Magazine, June 20, 2018. [3] Balaga, Marta. “Interview with Xavier Legrand,” Cineuropa, Sept. 9, 2017. [4] Shaffer, Marshal. “Interview: Xavier Legrand on Custody and Domestic Violence,” Slant Magazine, June 24, 2018. [5] Ibid.