‘In the Name of My Daughter’ movie review: A family drama revisited

The French film “In the Name of My Daughter” is based on a tricky real-life story. It’s even trickier to write about without giving away spoilers, if that’s even the right word for details that are revealed about actual events. Let’s just say that the movie re-creates a scandal (and likely crime) that rocked the French Riviera in the late 1970s. The story is ripe for Lifetime movie treatment.

Director André Téchiné, to his credit, avoids the tacky tabloid feel of a mystery that’s been rehashed many times in the intervening decades, as this one has, in court case after court case. But while the movie begins as an authentically told human story, it ultimately becomes overwrought before the whole thing peters out during its final scenes.