«Les chatouilles» or paedophilia shown on screen

Cinema Wednesdays - Jonas Follonier

A family friend, who wouldn't? Gilbert is a good guy, a joker, hard-working, caring, especially towards Odette, the little one. She has angel eyes and golden hair. She takes dance lessons and dreams of being a great prima ballerina. Gilbert is so «proud of her». So much so that, when he finds himself alone with her in his room, he suggests a strange game. «How about playing with dolls, Odette? But for real. You'd be the doll, and I'd be the little girl. Go and take off your clothes in the bathroom.» And the infernal cycle of «tickling» began. We're talking about an eight-year-old girl.

These atrocious scenes are repeated in small doses in Tickling. They show us how a paedophile can act to achieve his ends, the psychological perversion that accompanies this process of taking power over a child, and the sense of guilt that will seize the child. These are very difficult images to see in front of a cinema screen. Especially when one realizes - and the film does well to remind us of this in its endnote - that one child in five in Europe is a victim of sexual violence.

It would be wrong to review this film from the usual artistic perspective, and a certain parsimony is called for. Nevertheless, it's worth noting that a great deal of work has gone into the form: the music, or rather the silence, as well as the cinematography, are perfectly suited to the subject matter, which is charged with omnipresent tension. A symbolic aesthetic also serves the redemptive component of the plot, which moves back and forth between flashbacks featuring little Odette and the hell she lives through, and the present where adult Odette gradually learns to say her trauma and heal her mental cracks, which led her to drug addiction and a misunderstanding of sex.

This heavy atmosphere doesn't prevent the viewer from laughing out loud on several occasions, however, as the film also has its more comic moments. A fact that was not to be taken for granted. Two characters in particular bring warmth to this drama, the dance teacher Madame Maloc (Ariane Ascaride) and the man who will help adult Odette come to terms with her past, the endearing Lenny (Grégory Montel). On the tragic side of the story, apart from the rapist, the detestable character of the mother, played by the talented Karin Viard, takes the film one step further into the realm of the underworld, as her refusal to believe her daughter's final words, or their trivialization, simply makes you want to vomit and cry.

But it's the unacceptable reality of pedophile rape that we remember most about this film, leaving the darkened theater with a lump in our throat. It's as if you've just come out of your childhood bedroom, where your parents' friend was raping you. Because yes, Tickling shows that this tragedy can happen to anyone, that the pedophile is often the unsuspecting one, and that the step of telling what happened to the victims requires incredible mental strength. Even though their tormentor is guilty of stealing their life, it's the victims who feel most guilty. It's this terrible psychological fact that remains the hardest thing to accept when confronted with the subject. A certain kind of cinema invites us to do just that, and it leaves its mark on us forever.

Write to the author: jonas.follonier@leregardlibre.com

Photo credit: © Praesens-Film

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