There would be no other way to start “We Believe You” than to see Alice (Myriem Akheddiou) end up hurt herself while trying to serve her kids, running late for a custody hearing that none of them want to go to. Her 10-year-old son Etienne (Ulysse Goffin) thought they wouldn’t have to go to court after writing a letter to the judge affirming that he’d never want to see his father (Laurent Capelluto) again, making him dig in his heels quite literally at the tram stop where Alice tries desperately to get him and his 17-year-old sister Lila (Adele Pinckaers) onto the train and ends up with a bloody nose trying to pull him from the curb.
From the title of Charlotte Devillers and Arnaud Dufeys’ absorbing drama, you know where the filmmakers’ sympathies lie from the start, but nonetheless it seems the odds are stacked against Alice as the unnamed father has attempted to reassert his status as a guardian after she won full custody over the kids in their divorce and Etienne and Lila stopped speaking to him altogether two years prior. By simply being in the same space again with his ex and the kids, the father can claim a victory, but that’s just one flaw in the system that Devillers and Dufeys observe as lawyers are asked to present a case for the quarreling parents and the kids are escorted off to be questioned on their own.
There’s no doubt the directors did their due diligence when they contrast the formal civility of the proceedings in an ultramodern sterile white courthouse with the savagery that takes place inside as neither lawyer misses an opportunity to attack the character of their opposing client. It’s difficult to take the father seriously from the start when his lawyer wants to argue that Alice’s work in the medical field leads her to carries stories of sexual abuse she hears from patients home with her, but much as it irritates the judge, it’s a savvy strategy of planting doubt when the real issue at the heart of the matter reveals itself as the divorce was set into motion by allegations of child molestation on the part of the father. The family court can only consider the custody of the kids based on the information they have as part of the hearings they conduct rather than of any criminal case elsewhere, and with an investigation still ongoing, the father uses the limited amount of information to paint a much different version of the situation that is perfectly acceptable in the eyes of the law.
The camera is fixed on Alice for much of the hearing and Akheddiou, who has long popped up in supporting roles in the films of the Dardenne brothers such as “Young Ahmed” and “Two Days, One Night,” is more than up to letting the drama play out on her face alone. Devillers and Dufeys are careful about what they present throughout, showing how easily misinterpreted or weaponized even the slightest slip-ups revealing the harried mother Alice is despite the good face she has to put on for the court, and the film is expertly cut by editor Nicolas Bier to wring the most from reaction shots as the case is laid out with various elisions only the direct participants can know about. Both the film’s awkward title and an end title card citing certain statistics threaten to diminish the impact that “We Believe You” has as a taut legal thriller by coming across as a bit self-important, but nonetheless it is extraordinarily affecting, depicting a system not set up well to avoid retraumatizing those who come to it most in need of justice.
“We Believe You” will screen again at the Berlin Film Festival on February 18th at 1 pm at Cubix 9, February 19th at 9:30 pm at Cubix 8, February 22nd at 2:30 pm at Colosseum 1 and February 23rd at noon at Cubix 9.