The Dazzled (2019) User Reviews (3)

Slow dazzle

[ulicknormanowen · 8/10 · 15 December 2020]

This is Sarah Suco's first effort and it deserves your undivided attention ;she wrote the screenplay herself ,it's based on her own experience; she knows what she's talking about.

What can lead the average family to integrate a sect? The father is a teacher , they have four healthy children ,everything shows the perfect family ; Miss Suco does not give any explanation :were they disappointed by the politics ,the traditional religion ,did they want to lend a helping hand ? (in the police station ,the father claims that their community's purpose is to relieve the needy ,but one never sees them feed the poor ).

At first ,the community shows a spirit of mutual aid ;slowly but inexorably,cracks appear in the mirror: because during a little show the elder daughter Camille's clown act makes the audience laugh , the priest,their spiritual adviser, suggests that the young teenager give up the circus school lessons she attends; when her boyfriend calls on them, the mother blames him because he should not wear black ,the color of the Devil; for the priest who runs the community -who looks more and more like a sect - , every sin can be forgiven,but he demands that every sinner be confronted to the whole congregation and beg God's forgiveness ; if he or she does not comply ,they are subject to a sinister ceremony which looks like a terrifying exorcism.

The grandparents try to snatch their family from the clutches of those fanatics who demand everything:the individual does not exist anymore, and must submit to the group , he must give all his worldly things ,his house and his money to the "dove community "; the grandfather feels guilty :" what did I do that was wrong ? " as they turn a deaf ear on him and his wife.

Their elder sister ,Camille , now a teenager, feels there's something wrong in this sectarian way of life which blames and calls into question her desires, her freedom , and ,yep, her human rights and takes little by little a rebel stand : when she was little ,she used to accept the name of the game ,but now she just pretends .And she has not seen the worst yet (it occurs in the final scenes).She sleeps with the boyfriend -with-a -black-T-shirt ,she steals money from the community chest whilst her parents go into retreat in Paray-Le-Monial and take her siblings to a little spree .

This is a very important movie,which was unfairly overlooked by the audience last year; it's a strong indictment of the dangers of a sect ; it's not against religion or its charity organizations who help their fellow men.

All the cast is excellent : Camille Cottin and Eric Caravaca are the "dazzled" parents who do believe they are among God's chosen ones; Darroussin is an amazing spiritual adviser.Young Celeste Bruquell shines ,particularly in her scenes in the police station where she finds it hard to express herself with words .

The dangers of enclosed communities

[georgioskarpouzas · 8/10 · 13 November 2021]

I was moved and impressed by this movie. It describes the gradual immersion of an average French family within the practices and norms of a Roman Catholic charismatic community. A community of zealots belonging to the fringes of the established Church which exercises strict control over all aspects of their members life from dress and behavior to sexuality and finance.

The eldest daughter of the family, a rebellious and strong-willed teenager questions the authority the sect exercises over her parents and siblings and is responsible for the final catharsis.

The movie portrays admirably the everyday life within the community, its rites, songs and prayers and the contradiction of its value-system with that of mainstream French society, acutely felt by the teenage daughter in opposition to her fellow pupils at high-school.

The control of the community over the sexuality of its members goes along with the teachings of the official Catholic Church and is no news for those accustomed with Christian sexual mores. Almost all branches of Christianity profess an ascetic morality in dire contrast with the loose sexual mores of contemporary hedonistic and consumerist society. You do not need to be an enclosed charismatic community to preach the need to control the sexual impulse you just have to be Christian. The punishment of theft is also an aspect of civil society and the secular French Republic. It is not an originality of charismatic communities.

In order to prove that the community is flawed the director chooses the rather facile stratagem to make the eldest daughter witness the sexual abuse of one of her younger brothers by a male member of the community. This event acts as a catalyst for the plot since the girl tells the police about it and all the nuances and subtleties are demolished in the final scene.

I think this was an abrupt way to end the movie since it is different to be eccentric, counter-cultural and different from the average norm compared to being criminal.

As the American conservative intellectual Rod Dreher has stated in his book The Benedict Option being a practising Christian in the West is by definition a counter-cultural choice. Being different, antiquated and naive is not the same with being a community that fosters child-abuse. Of course the recent findings of Ciase, the French acronym for the Independent Committee for sexual abuses in the Church have proved that after the family the Church is the second social institution where sexual abuse occurs more commonly.

The actors play their roles convincingly and ably and even the parents who are under the spell of the Sheperd, the leader of the charismatic community are not portrayed in black and white at least in the beginning.

The director of this movie lived herself from eight to eighteen within the confines of such a community and speaks from experience.

The Charismatic Renewal inspired by Protestant examples provided the mainstream Catholic Church with many communities eager to live the faith more authentically compared with the lukewarm cafeteria Catholicism of mainstream religious culture. Sometimes their zeal led to excesses.

Surely the predominant secular culture in the West allows for more sexual freedom and self-expression than serious religious commitment. France is an obvious example since it is one of the most secularized societies in the EU. Even my native Greece which even before the sixties and seventies experienced the phenomenon of religious fraternities eager to live the faith in a more serious manner than allowed by the mainstream has succumbed to the lure of secular post-modernity.

The film correctly criticizes the narrow horizons and thought control of enclosed charismatic communities. But if one is honest one has to admitt that modern western culture does not have a problem solely with enclosed charismatic communities, it has a problem with the Faith as such.

a testimony

[Kirpianuscus · 15 August 2021]

It is difficult to define or judge the story. At the first sigh, it seems a demonstration against Romano- Catholic Church, in old tradition of French anticlerical spirit . Few scenes are slices of Neoprotestant rituals. But, first, it is a testimony about ten years of life of a young woman, her childhood period between 8 and 18 years old. So, behind reserves, behind the new proves of exces of power/ authority of a part of Romano - Catholicism , definition of faith in profound sense, holes in story, the admirable acting remains the basic certitude. And the most significant virtue., the young Celeste Brunquell, like Camille Cottin and Eric Caravaca being the easy examples in this sense..