‘A Silence’ Review: Joachim Lafosse’s Gradually Shattering Probe Into Toxic Family Secrets
variety.comGuy Lodge Film Critic In his staggering 2012 film “Our Children,” Belgian writer-director Joachim Lafosse turned an unthinkable true-life tragedy — the story of a mentally ailing mother who, one hitherto ordinary afternoon, single-handedly murdered all five of her children — into deeply compassionate drama, focusing not on the lurid whats of the event, but its more intimate, less discussed whys.
That approach again serves Lafosse well in “A Silence,” another solemn, upsetting domestic chamber piece that lightly fictionalizes and foregrounds the hidden, knotty familial tensions behind a headline-making scandal.
In this instance, it’s one disturbing, high-profile court case that begets another, both connected by differing forms of patriarchal abuse — but Lafosse’s interests lie, as ever, less in procedural formalities than in unruly household turmoil.
Outside Belgium, audiences are less likely to be familiar with the case of serial killer Marc Dutroux, convicted in 2004 of the kidnapping, rape and murder of multiple girls — or that of Victor Hissel, a lawyer for two of Dutroux’s victims, who was later imprisoned for possession of child pornography.
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