Playground not a psychological drama, but it could be. Belgian director Laura Wandel’s jarring debut film delves into the world of school-age kids and observes their moves with chilling precision. It studies its subjects as a whole – children, bullies, adults dealing with the effects of the latter – and makes haunting conclusions about the nature of Darwinians in contexts. idyllic appearance.
The film, which premiered this year in the Cannes Uncertainty category and recently acquired by Film Movement, opens appropriately on back-to-school. As the children rush through the gate, eager to escape their parents’ watchful eyes, Nora (Maya Vanderbeque), the protagonist, struggles to part with her father (Karim Leklou). The nervousness of a 7-year-old child can be felt and is not easily soothed by the reassuring words of his father. She, unlike her less feared brother Abel (Gunter Duret), is a teenager.
Playground
Key point
A captivating and haunting portrait of childhood.
Nora finally enters the strange world of her elementary school. With the help of cinematographer Frédéric Noirhomme, Wandel filmed Playground from Nora’s perspective – a bold choice that pays off with an engaging role-playing story. The world looks different, more fascinating, from the vantage point of a four-legged child. The adult body becomes gigantic; crowded, energetic, chaotic halls; the cafe is a jungle of implied social activities; and the playground is rough terrain. After enduring morning classes, Nora tries to sit with her brother during lunch but is turned away by the teacher. The voiceless vocalist confirmed that she had to eat with friends of her age.
Breaks prove to be the hardest part of the day. Having no friends at first, Nora clings to Abel, who is running with an elderly mob of bullies. He repeatedly rejects her attempts to play, warning that if she doesn’t stay away from him, she could potentially become a target.
But Abel’s fate changed. Days later, Nora stumbles across her brother’s “friends” who are beating him up. At first, she tries to stop them on her own and then begs her brother for protection. He just told her not to get involved or talk bad.
Abel’s situation thrusts Nora into an increasingly complex dilemma, which Wandel handled expertly. Assume a child’s perspective can be risky. Critic Margo Jefferson wrote in 2004: “When writers over-define their childish characters, both innocence and experience are obscured,” critic Margo Jefferson wrote in 2004.” Surprisingly, adults also oversimplify. After all, there are a lot of kids who can’t see or can’t choose. ” Jefferson is referring to stage plays, but her analysis also applies to films, which tend to abuse a child’s perspective. Playground avoid this problem by taking Nora’s experience seriously, resulting in a story that seems to hold true even if it is sometimes credited as dubious.
Saving Abel will take Nora’s place, and the plans she cherishes change as she becomes more knowledgeable and abiding by the rules of the playground – and the school. At first, she tries to warn the teachers and students, but they get distracted, arrive too late or get drunk, insisting that the fighting is at Abel’s age (this is never stated in the film). ) is normal.
Understandably displeased with those responses, Nora told her father, who at first dealt with the issue on his own. His misguided intervention only made things worse. A particularly brutal bullying session brings Abel, Nora, and the bullies into the principal’s office. The defendant’s confessions were laborious and forced apologies, but the adults were satisfied and naive to think that everyone would get along now.
But that’s not how the playground works, and Wandel, whose film is 72 minutes long, dedicates PlaygroundThe third action to investigate the consequences of this meeting. Abel loses her crew and begins bullying another child, a series of events that Nora struggles to deal with. On the other hand, she became a social media celebrity, losing a few friends she managed to make because of her brother’s reputation as a coward.
Vanderbeque handled Nora’s moods impressively, going from worry and despair to anxiety and anger within seconds. No longer motivated by trying to protect Abel, Nora forged her own identity and tried to find her place among her peers. She begins to see Abel as the source of her problems and attacks him. Despite its problems, Playground not a call to action masked like a movie. It’s a more engaging work of observation, more concerned with identifying patterns, finding motivations, and giving reality to how we relate to each other.
