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Marie Kreutzer’s ‘Gentle Monster’ Premieres in Cannes Competition

Kreutzer says she wrote the drama before the 2023 Teichtmeister scandal.

Overview

  • The film, which premiered Friday in Cannes competition, follows Léa Seydoux as a wife whose family is shaken when police investigate her husband for child pornography.
  • Kreutzer says the script was underway years earlier and that the Teichtmeister case did not shape the story.
  • She traces the project to a 2020 in-depth article and a long research call with a police investigator held two days before she learned of the charges against Teichtmeister.
  • Early reviews praise Seydoux’s focused performance and the choice to keep the alleged offender off center, though some critics call the parallel investigator subplot and pacing cluttered.
  • The Cannes debut arrives with unavoidable context from Kreutzer’s prior film Corsage, after co-star Florian Teichtmeister was charged in early 2023 and later pled guilty, sharpening audience focus on the film’s themes of honesty and shame.