Coups de foudre

Five women explain how their romantic relationships descended into violence. Taking turns, the young women provide a chronological account of their dramatic story – the growing cracks in the relationship and their partner’s transformation from lover to tormentor. They allowed the situation to continue out of shame, out of fear of losing a child, and in the hope that the situation might improve. “I lived in a kind of constant fog I was lost in,” one of the women explains. A permanent fixture in all their lives is an intolerably cruel partner who alternates brutal violence with psychological games. One woman was in a coma for months after the love of her life beat her up, while another attempted suicide. We hear how one of them woke to find her husband shaving her head: “He called me Auschwitz.” These compelling interviews are accompanied by unhurried scenes in the women’s shelter shot in black-and-white and muted color. The women articulate the horror and try to work out how they could go so far in allowing love and pride to take precedence over their own dignity. What does this mean with regard to their future?