While I find it interesting that this director chose to focus on the parents more than the teenage daughter, the victim of the fathers sexual assaults, I think the story is wasted and condescending and gives far too much leniency to the abuser and his wife. While I agree that is is very realistic that the mother would want to move past this and lay blame on her daughter, who in no way encouraged any of what happened or deserved it, but was unable to speak up and thus becomes a target because both parents are unwilling or unable to take responsibility for what they did or allowed to happen to an innocent 14 year old child, I find is disturbing and sickening that the social services allowed them to keep custody of the children with a registered sex offender in the home. That's it. He abused his daughter. He scarred her forever. He is a sexual predator both by definition and by law, but he expects his daughter to forgive him, to be comfortable hugging him or speaking to him, and in truth she struggles with severe depression, self hatred like cutting her hair off in an attempt to make herself less attractive to him or a boy who likes her, to be left alone. These signs or downward spiral and those of the hurt and confusion of her younger brother who doesn't understand what happened are all but ignored or even looked on with hostility because she is disrupting the attempt to save the family unit which has already been destroyed. It's over and hour of victim blaming and revictimizing the child who has been assaulted. It's probably completely accurate to what happens to children every day, but it doesn't make it easy to watch and one wonders if it also allows perpetrators and their spouses who are in denial of this sort of heinous crime to feel justified or excused for not protecting their kids. Pure and simple, once someone crosses this line, they should never be allowed into the child's life again.
Review of A Long Way Home
