Playground

Belgian director Laura Wandel takes the classroom as her stage in a confident and adventurous first feature.

Discovering a film like Playground is one of the great pleasures of a critic's life. It seems incredible that this should be a first feature since it is a totally confident and adventurous work and one clearly destined to be among the best films to be released in 2022. It's also the kind of piece which needs the help of critics to find an audience. Because of its very nature it comes with no names attached. As a first time writer/director Laura Wandel inevitably lacks any established drawing power and, since the central characters in Playground are all young children (the adults have minor, subsidiary roles), the cast is unknown to us. But, just as Playground ensures that we will watch out for what this Belgian filmmaker does next, no one who sees it will forget the remarkable performance of Maya Vanderbeque who plays the seven-year-old Nora.

Made under the title Un monde, Wandel’s film is a work that will be meaningful to audiences everywhere. That is because she shows a world familiar to most of us, that of the school in which bullying takes place. A theme that other films have touched on but which is rarely a central concern, here we are dealing directly with two young siblings confronted by the acts of bullies and all too aware that if they tell - be that to parents or to teachers - there is a definite risk that it will make matters worse. It's a situation with which we can all identify to some extent, but Wandel adds to our sense of involvement by the way in which she structures the story and by the way in which she tells it.

Nora’s father (Karim Leklou) is first seen taking her to school as a new pupil and from the start the camera is placed at her eye level so that everything is seen from her viewpoint. This in itself encourages the audience to identify with her and Maya Vanderbeque, who never seems to be acting, is so wonderfully expressive that we share Nora's feelings throughout. What adds to the emotional subtlety of the film is the fact that the real victim of bullying is not Nora herself but her slightly older brother. Abel (another fine performance, this one by Günter Duret) is already a pupil at the same primary school and Nora wants to protect him by letting their father know what is going on. However, he forbids her to do so.

Playground has a sense of total reality aided further by the absence of any music score and by Wandel’s impactful use of sound, especially that made by all the kids together. The film also examines the changing ways in which Abel is affected by being bullied but, even so, Wandel recognises that the material is best handled in a compact way (like last year’s Petite maman the film’s running length is less than 75 minutes). The one drawback is that the way in which things eventually develop centres on Abel and, since we see everything through Nora's eyes, we lack the full insight into the boy’s own perspective which would make the very abrupt final scene more effective. But that's a small point. Playground is a marvellous discovery and that goes for Wandel and Vanderbeque too.

Original title: Un monde.

MANSEL STIMPSON

Cast: Maya Vanderbeque, Günter Duret, Karim Leklou, Laurą Verlinden, Simon Caudry, Lena Girard Voss, Thao Maerten, Elsa Laforge, Naël Ammana, Sandra Blancke.

Dir Laura Wandel, Pro Stéphane Lhoest, Screenplay Laura Wandel, Ph Frédéric Noirhomme, Art Dir Philippe Bertin, Ed Nicolas Rumpl, Costumes Vanessa Everard.

Dragons Films/Lunanime-New Wave Films.
72 mins. Belgium. 2021. US Rel: 11 February 2022. UK Rel: 22 April 2022. Cert. 15.