Playground

An interesting movie about the complexity of the world how children experience it. I loved the camera's point of view, constantly on the height of the children.

This movie is everything it have to be. The camerawork is really brilliant , the hand held camera gives uncomfortable feel throughout the movie. The performances by siblings is just brilliant throughout the movie they carry the burden of movie. The story is really very simple but detailed. Every moment seem to be important and not a repetition. And thus movie is very quick but slow it gives time to viewers to get to understand what's going on. To quickly summarise this movie is a must watch, thought provoking and not easy to forget.

Bullying is such a tricky difficult issue to solve especially among kids. It's complicated not only because it's hard to discover if some kid is objected and suffers from it among his collogues but also because the subjected can easily transform into the new bully as an act of respond by transforming the anger into violence, and that is what PLAYGROUND portrayed effectively and painfully here.

This is really a very remarkable film. Exploring the group dynamics of school children, director Laura Wandel has taken the radical choice of positioning her camera at children's height, registering only what children see. Adults are reduced to supporting roles, and they are only visible when they occupy themselves directly with Nora, the heroine of Un Monde, played amazingly by 9 year old Maya Vanderbeque.

Not only the way Wandel shows us what children see makes this film special. The script is also very clever in explaining how the mechanics of bullying can really make young children desperate, and how it is almost impossible to find a solution using adult logic. It is almost a cliché to say that children can be very cruel, but this film shows why and how it happens.

The almost documentary filming style, with lots of close-ups, is impressive. In one crucial scene, the camera focuses for several mintues on Nora's face, while she registers what's going on around her. The viewer hears what she hears, but sees only her face. The result is spectacular.

This film can easily stand next to the other great documentary-style film about school life, 'Entre les murs'. That film was nominated for an Oscar. 'Un Monde' is the Belgian entry for the Oscar race. It deserves at least a nomination.

This is a gritty story about the sociology of a school playground. It's also an account of love. Do you remember your school playground? How did we get out alive?