Playground is a masterclass in immersive cinema, unlocking memories of the school playground in all its diversity through an exceptional, detail-driven movie where a child’s perspective is placed centre stage. Wandel’s film speaks to our subconscious through exquisite natural performances and sublime cinematography, challenging our airbrushed and rose-tinted view of childhood while reminding us just how alien the adult world is at a young age. BFI London Film Festival presents Playground (Un monde); Playground is released nationwide on April 22nd.
What would you share if I asked you to recount a memory from your primary school days? Perhaps it would be something positive, such as a friendship that meant everything to you or a day when you created something extraordinary in class. Hell, it might even be a smell, a taste associated with a school dinner or a sound that remains lodged in your brain. I doubt anyone would recount the fear, apprehension and doubt surrounding our first days, weeks and months at school, or, in fact, the fear of other kids and their actions in the wild west of the school playground. But were these memories not more potent than the rose-tinted view we cling to as adults?
The answer to that question is complicated, but one thing is beyond doubt: as adults, we quickly learn to airbrush away many of the negatives of our childhood, even if they continue to haunt our subconscious. This tendency to lock away painful childhood memories exists within us all, from our early school years to our late teens. As time passes, these memories gather dust, becoming increasingly opaque until we are unsure what was real and what was a mere childhood nightmare. However, those painful school memories occasionally escape the vault we have created, either through a dream, a smell, or a sound.
In her stunning debut film, Playground, Belgian director Laura Wandel unlocks those memories through the medium of film as we follow the daily school life of a brother and sister, seven-year-old Nora (Maya Vanderbeque) and her older brother Abel (Günter Duret). Far from being a standard school-based family drama, Wandel creates a sensory journey where the jungle of school life is viewed from the perspective of young Nora, and our own memories are sparked as we walk alongside her.
Playground is stunning in its visual and auditory power, as the film’s central story of playground bullying, intimidation, fear and isolation carries all the intensity of a war movie as groups form, only to crumble and reform under a new banner—the adults, distant, mysterious and often inept in their understanding of the playground jungle. But what is stunning in this story of playground politics is Wandel’s ability to marry darkness with light as kids bite their sandwiches into animal shapes while their friends guess what it is. This is a movie as much about the urgent need to belong, the random conversations of childhood, and the creative games kids play, as it is about the fear of the playground.
Playground is a masterclass in immersive cinema, unlocking memories of the school playground in all its diversity through an exceptional, detail-driven movie where a child’s perspective is placed centre stage. Wandel’s film speaks to our subconscious through exquisite natural performances and sublime cinematography, challenging our airbrushed and rose-tinted view of childhood while reminding us just how alien the adult world is at a young age.
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