Le Successeur

"Following on from my previous films, The Successor digs deeper into the issues surrounding patriarchy. Nowadays, we often speak of ‘violence against women’; I’ve often used this expression when promoting Custody. But it somewhat bypasses the main element of the issue. In fact, when talking about ‘violence against women’, we’re quite obviously forgetting to mention the main protagonist from which the problem stems: Men.
First and foremost, The Successor focuses on ‘male violence’. How is it that men are also their own worst enemy? It’s fairly easy nowadays to see how patriarchy subjugates women and children, but what perhaps isn’t as obvious and more difficult to admit, because it is handed down and trans- generational, is that it also crushes men, brothers and sons. We regard blood ties as sacrosanct and therefor unbreakable in the eyes of our society. The axioms ‘like father like son’, ‘from father to son’, ‘in the name of the father and of the son...’ are deeply entrenched in our minds."

Xavier Legrand