La Mif

Former social worker Fred Baillif sets his third fictitious drama in a Swiss care home for teenagers in need.

Fred Baillif comes from Switzerland and his film is set in Geneva, its main setting being a residential care home for teenage girls. Its title, La Mif, is an abbreviated slang term for family and it refers to the way in which in any such home that lives up to its aims the inhabitants should have a sense of kinship. The film's central character is the experienced manager of the establishment, Lora (Claudia Grob), but it also features strongly no less than seven of the girls whose backgrounds and ethnicity are highly varied.

Baillif is a former social worker so his concern here is to present a truthful portrait of this world and, indeed, his largely non-professional cast includes youngsters not far removed from the characters they are portraying. That Baillif’s earlier films were mainly documentaries fits in with this approach and the triumphant success of a not entirely dissimilar British project, 2019’s Rocks, is a reminder of what can be achieved in this area. Given that La Mif has won a number of awards, it might be assumed that it too is a highly effective work yet, surprisingly, my own reaction was to find it a sad example of a heartfelt work that was entirely misjudged. Perhaps I should suggest that readers see La Mif and then decide for themselves, but I will explain just why despite its sympathetic subject-matter I find it so disappointing.

Baillif divides his film into named sections essentially giving each of the seven teenagers her own chapter, although two of them being lesbian lovers share a single segment. However, with no flashbacks to their past history included, this way of putting the focus on each of the girls one by one is too brief to establish the full degree of involvement that one wants. A girl seen in one sequence will reappear in later episodes but, if that leads to more information about her emerging, that comes across too piecemeal and at times confusingly. The fact that the episodes seen are not chronological adds to that weakness. Sometimes we go back to events that have occurred prior to what we have already seen and, furthermore, late scenes which centre on Lora prove to be extended treatments of scenes viewed in shorter versions earlier in the film. Lora herself is given a storyline but, in a manner that is characteristic of this enterprise, her backstory only emerges in dribs and drabs. The players all convince, but we want more concentrated detail about the characters so that we can feel for each of them in turn and the film jumps around far too much for that to happen. Perhaps by spotlighting as many as seven girls in addition to Lora and her staff the film features too many characters.

If the way in which the material is presented seriously weakens its potential impact, La Mif also displays another misjudgment. The music heard on the soundtrack - almost always a sign that a chapter is drawing to a close - is utterly inappropriate. Since La Mif seeks to be raw and realistic in a quasi-documentary manner, why should we be fed Bach and Scarlatti on the soundtrack together, on occasion, with contributions from the Swingle Singers who are most prominently associated with the 1960s and 1970s? For me the subject matter and the cast deserved something much better, but those awards are ample evidence of another view.

Alternative title: The Fam.

MANSEL STIMPSON

Cast: Claudia Grob, Anaïs Uldry, Kassia Da Costa, Charlie Areddy, Amandine Golay, Joyce Ndayisenga, Sara Tulu, Amelie Tonsi.

Dir Fred Baillif, Pro Agnès Boutruche and Véronique Vergari, Screenplay Fred Baillif with Stephane Mitchell, Ph Joseph Areddy, Pro Des Mary Villars, Ed Fred Baillif, Costumes Lucy Mann.

Fresh Production/Radio Télévision Suisse-BFI Films.
112 mins. Switzerland. 2021. UK Rel: 25 February 2022. Cert. 15.