It All Starts Today

One of those films about human stories that touches you since the very first moment. Those who like real human stories with something deep and authentic to say must see this movie. Touching performance by its main character Phillipe Torreton and amazingly realistic performance by the children appearing, many times 20 or 30 at same time. If you want to see pure cinema and identify with the characters, this a must see for you

It always happens. When things get tough, local, State, and the federal government save money on the backs of the poor first. Who, besides the poor suffer, the teachers, of course? This is a magnificent story of pre-school teachers coping with abuse, neglect, incest, and all forms of child abuse while the government agencies that are supposed to help just make excuses.

The school is falling apart and being broken into for food, and the school board, and the police do little or nothing to help. Families are coping with 34% unemployment and the resulting depression. Sound familiar? It is also happening all over America, not just in France.

The teacher training even tells new teachers that they will be social workers more than teachers. It is difficult to understand how learning can take place with children who are hungry, cold, and abused.

Philippe Torreton does an excellent job as Daniel Lefebvre in writer/director Bertrand Tavernier's film. His frustration and anger shows whether he is throwing out a child welfare worker or yelling at the Mayor for cutting lunches. All the while he has to deal with problems at home and his ailing father.

This film is an excellent commentary of the sheer difficulties in trying to improve a bad situation when the whole system - from the families involved to the political authorities - are effectively working against you. It shows that it is vital to persevere because to give up would be awful. Its ultimately optimistic about the strength of the human spirit but scathing about the corrupting and degrading influence of the system.

The only criticisms are that the camera technique was very fluid which meant that the picture was always moving up and down, in and out of focus. This was interesting but quite taxing on the eyes. Also, it was perhaps half an hour longer than it could have been so it dragged somewhat in places. But a very good film. 4/5

"It All Starts Today" is an open ended slice-of-life tale which takes us into the world of a good-hearted, dedicated, and hard working French Kindergarten teacher who has a lot more on his plate than finger painting. Protag Daniel (Torrenton) not only teaches but runs interference for abused kids, wrestles with the local mayor for funding, contends with vandals, and juggles a host of economic, social, and school political issues all the while maintaining a relationship with his girl friend and her son. Though there isn't much of an arc to the story, this well crafted film does create a likeable character who shows us that the opportunity for heroism exists everywhere in life...even kindergarten. (B)

Don't settle down for a comfortable couple of hours easy entertainment. This film carries a message and it will thrash you with it. This is not a film with a stylised story set out in the classical beginning-middle-ending formula; it is a film which swings from scene to scene, at times hectically, with splendid unrehearsed sequences shot with continual changes and panning at frequently too high speed, swinging from schoolmaster to clusters of young faces, zooming in on one, lifting up to worried mothers bursting in, and back down to the schoolmaster, at trepidating speed, breathlessly, at whatever price, because the important thing was to get it all as it happened, how it happened; no way of organising thirty little kids to do the scene again: it would be just too artificial and useless.

The price is some lack of focussing, but it is worth the end result: Alain Choquart under Tavernier's orders achieves something monumental, something magical as his agility with the camera swoops around the school capturing every taut smile, every nervous finger-twisting, the first tears from a hysterical mother... Bertrand Tavernier comes out of that French school of film-making to which he adhered for most of his earlier output and from which he tried to break away with risky excursions into adventure cinema in 'La Fille DE D'Artagnan' (which must have worried Alexandre Dumas) and 'Capitaine Conan' (which must have worried quite a lot of people), as if in a desperate attempt to reach Hollywood-tradition epic proportions.

With 'Ça commence aujourd'hui' everything comes back to earth with a rather nasty bump: Tavernier gets down to the gritty bits of sordid suburbs on the edge of an industrial city (Lille) where in most families the father of the household is either out of work, or drunk, or both, or has run away; the local schoolmaster takes it on himself to fill the rôle of father, a job which Phillipe Torreton carries out brilliantly, aided and abetted by his girl-friend, Maria Pitarresi, who doesn't.

But perhaps the brilliance of the film resides in the sheer pace, as the cameraman has to keep his wits about him so as not to lose those gestures, in what must be the nearest thing to live, unrehearsed cinema: above all in the rapid shots among the small children, where there is no acting or interpretation - it is all too direct, too immediate for any kind of infantile amateur acting classes.

There may be a few technical weaknesses due to the way in which the film just had to be made, but the end result is monumental, a brilliant though agonising document.

Every European politician should be forced to see it: maybe a few of them would wake up and decide to do something useful.