The contemporary Franco-Belgian cinema certainly does not lack for films about toxic relationships and domestic abuse, with Xavier Legrand’s “Custody” and Valérie Donizelli’s “Just The Two of Us” among the recent best. An impressively shot, tension-filled drama about a woman trying to escape from an abusive, controlling husband, featuring strong performances by French-Canadian thesps Monia Chokri and Nils Schneider, French writer-helmer Géraldine Nakache’s “Think Good” is pretty textbook as these things go. But it gains an extra piquancy from being centered on a modern Orthodox Jewish couple, with select religious rituals and rules impacting the drama and the visuals. Fest and boutique distributors should think good about this title, which unspools in this year’s non-competitive Cannes Premiere sidebar.
Parisians Gil (Chokri, president of this year’s Camera d’Or jury at Cannes), a camera assistant on film shoots, and Jacques (Nils Schneider), a businessman, meet in Dubai where he sweeps her off her feet with his intense love-bombing. When she becomes pregnant, she considers an abortion, but he talks her into marriage, despite the fact they barely know each other.
Both sides of the couple are Jewish, although Gil enjoys her religion without much ritual or public observance. For Jacques, however, rigid adherence to the outward rules of his faith are important, yet in an early tell of his pathological side, he cautions Gil not to mention her pregnancy to their Rabbi (Daniel Cohen) or the operator of the mikvah where she must immerse herself before their wedding.
