The year’s most devastating film, French director Xavier Legrand’s breathtaking debut feature Custody (Jusqu’à la Garde) will leave you shaking in your seat.

Taking us inside the harrowing reality of a woman’s struggle to be believed, freeing herself and her kids from her abusive ex-husband, this razor-sharp revelation of a movie cuts to the bone.

Critics and audiences alike raved on aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, awarding it a 95 per cent rating. 

Anthony Lane at The New Yorker said Legrand is “precociously adept at turning the screws of suspense”, while The Observer’s Wendy Ide said, “For all its stripped-bare economy and unsentimentality, this is one of the most emotionally devastating cinema experiences of the past year”.

Among a clutch of awards won by Custody, Legrand took home the Silver Lion for best direction at last year’s Venice Film Festival, and the Luigi De Laurentiis Award for best first feature. 

From Custody’s deliberately ambiguous and heartbreaking opening scene, Léa Drucker is magnetic as Miriam, a bundle of taut nerves.

Facing an impassive judge, she struggles for sole custody of her young son Julien (an incredible Thomas Gioria) in a closed hearing with hulking Antoine (Denis Ménochet from Assassin’s Creed).

Encountering an impossibly high bar when it comes to proving Antoine’s violent ways, even an imploring letter from Julien himself is not enough, with joint custody over the boy granted.

The couple’s almost 18-year-old daughter Joséphine (Mathilde Auneveux) is deemed capable of making her own decisions.

Expanding on Legrand’s Oscar-nominated short Just Before Losing Everything (Avant Que deTtout Perdre) – which detailed the moment Miriam leaves Antoine – Custody is arguably better watched without this intro. 

Coming into Custody cold allows Legrand to expertly sow the seeds of doubt faced by so many women, landing the ‘he said, she said’ opener with aplomb.

Working a realistic style with a serrated edge, Legrand builds and builds the unbearable tension.

Antoine’s manipulative and overly domineering behaviour when picking up Julien from his grandparents, haranguing his son mentally and physically to reveal his mother’s new address, is horrendous to watch. 

The fear in the 12-year-old’s eyes is a sure warning sign that sees an increasingly fraught situation spiral out of control.

Building to a terrifying finale that sees mother and son face Antoine’s rage together, Drucker is staggering as a woman pushed to the very edge, torn between her maternal instinct to protect her son at all costs and her own sheer terror.

For all its punch, some of the film’s most powerful moments are its most subtle, like the haunted look on Joséphine’s face as she sings on stage at her birthday party, slowly realising from watching her mother’s body language that her brother is missing, and her father may be nearby. 

A difficult but important film, given an Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report that found that a woman is killed by her partner every week in Australia, Custody is a five-star masterpiece and Legrand a remarkable talent. 

But it’s Drucker and Gioria who are utterly unforgettable as a damaged but resilient family, hoping against hope for freedom from fear.