When Édouard’s mother reveals she is—not for the first time—enduring an abusive relationship, mother and son plot her next steps in what is at once an edge-of-the-seat escape narrative and a meditation on freedom and renewal.

Late one night, Édouard receives a telephone call from his mother. In tears, she tells him that her partner, her first since her abusive marriage to Édouard’s father ended, has been insulting and humiliating her. I thought this would be a new life for me and now it’s starting all over.

From afar, in Athens, Édouard swiftly sets a plan in place for Monique; the next morning, she leaves the apartment she has been sharing with the man. What takes shape over the next weeks, through phone calls and informal internet tutorials, on video chats and train rides, is a powerful and transformative shared experience for mother and son as they navigate the aftermath of male brutality, confront the limitations of class and society, and lay bare the pain of their past. With characteristic insight into society’s underpinnings and oversights, and with exquisite and tender portraiture, Édouard Louis’s Monique Escapes is a profound story of a woman—a mother—and a family’s search for more.