A Family

An incest victim often stands alone. The crime is too immense and incomprehensible for people to deal with. Even immediate family members turn away or close their eyes. This mechanism is agonizingly present in the directorial debut of author Christine Angot, who seeks redress from her family.

Angot, who as a teenager and young adult was repeatedly raped by her father (events she has dealt with in several of her novels), confronts her mother, ex-husband and stepmother about what happened to her, and how they responded.

She alternates the unsettling and sometimes unnerving quest for answers— with the camera as witness to the pervasive sense of helplessness and frustration—with old VHS footage of Angot and her ex-husband and young daughter.

Her sometimes confrontational approach is especially courageous when you consider the ridicule, rather than sympathy, her novels engendered in some quarters of the French media—illustrated here by a disturbing scene on television. Ultimately, it is only Angot’s now-adult daughter who stands by her, instead of opposing her.