To read the plot summary, one would think that this is a poorly written script with two different plots. In fact, the whole thing makes perfect sense. But one must be a bit of an insider as I am to find oneself riveted by this complex and troubling story.
The big flaw in the plot is that there is no seal on the confessional when one confesses oneself the victim rather than the criminal. I would have to guess that the same is true in England as in the US and that a priest who heard a child confess to being incestuously abused by her father would march out on the instant and report it to social services.
To really appreciate this movie, one has to have been in the position (antique for me now but the memories are there) of loving a belief system and an institution and all the smells and bells and at the same time finding it cynically unwelcoming and compromised.
The big flaw in the plot is that there is no seal on the confessional when one confesses oneself the victim rather than the criminal. I would have to guess that the same is true in England as in the US and that a priest who heard a child confess to being incestuously abused by her father would march out on the instant and report it to social services.
To really appreciate this movie, one has to have been in the position (antique for me now but the memories are there) of loving a belief system and an institution and all the smells and bells and at the same time finding it cynically unwelcoming and compromised.