Many films about children are mediated by the adult gaze. This intense and remarkable debut from Belgian filmmaker Laura Wandel is entirely and refreshingly different. (Review by Patrick Compton)
Playground is one of the films on the forthcoming European Film Festival in South Africa which goes hybrid for its 9th edition between October 13 and 23, 2022.
The film is only 72 minutes long – a perfect length – and focuses almost exclusively on the experiences of the central protagonist, seven-year-old Nora, on her first day at school. From the moment she and her older brother Abel are deposited by their father at the school gates, we are immediately sucked into a child’s world.
The movie’s French title is Un Monde (A World) which accurately reflects the way cinematographer Frederic Noirhomme shoots the movie with a hand-held camera. Almost every shot is either a close-up of Nora or from her point of view. Adults are often cut off at the hip, because that is how Nora sees them. There is no soundtrack to help guide our responses to the action; instead, there is the incessant noise of shouting children in the playground and the voices of teachers and children in the classroom. Where Nora is concerned there is often a disembodied voice addressing her, particularly if she is engaging with an adult. This creates a suffocating sensation, both for Nora and the viewer. There is no escape for the little girl, or us, from this enclosed, claustrophobic world.
Nora, wondrously played by Maya Vanderbeque, is a sensitive child at odds with the sometimes-feral world she has been thrown into. Director Wendel doesn’t overplay this. It would have been easy to create a quasi-Dickensian world of young thugs and monstrous teachers. This doesn’t happen. The teachers are sympathetically drawn on the whole, though they are helpless to offer protection to the vulnerable at all times.
The drama that provides the movie’s narrative occurs amongst the children as tentative friendships are made and broken. There is, of course, bullying, with Nora witnessing her brother being abused. Her attempts to help him backfire horribly and this leads to a sequence of events that stretch her relationship to Abel to breaking point.
This is a film that shows, in heart-breaking detail at times, the breaking down of a child’s state of innocence and grace as the complex, ruthless world comes tumbling down on her. As viewers, we suffer and completely identify with Nora and I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a remarkable performance from a child, with Venderbeque’s performance echoing that of Jean-Pierre Leaud in Francois Truffaut’s outstanding Les Quatre-Cent Coups (The 400 Blows). - Patrick Compton
The European Film Festival 2022 is screened online and runs from October 13 to 23, with all movies screened for free. There are also some showings in cinemas in Cape Town and Johannesburg. For more information, click on the Festival logo to the right of this article or visit www.eurofilmfest.co.za
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