Director: Laura Wandel
Stars: Maya Vanderbeque, Günter Duret, Karim Leklou, Laura Verlinden
Synopsis: A seven-year-old girl witnesses her older brother being bullied. Though he swears her to secrecy, she tells their father and soon finds herself the victim of bullying as well.
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Bullying can turn what should be a temple for learning into a breeding ground for lifelong psychological damage. Laura Wandel’s feature debut and Belgium’s 2022 Oscar submission, Playground, brilliantly portrays this notion through the eyes of a girl discovering a new world — hence the original name of the film, Un Monde — called school.
Playground grabs your attention from the very first frame and never lets go. Nora (Maya Vanderbeque in a riveting performance) is the name of the new girl. She’s being assured by her older brother Abel (Günter Duret) that everything will be okay and is soon forced to let go of the hand of her father (Karim Leklou) to make her way into the classroom. It’s an authentic representation of a moment you might be able to remember from your own life experience: the fear and confusion of being “abandoned” in school by the person you trust the most.
This whole introductory scene is highly engaging because it isn’t shot in an ordinary manner, nor is the rest of Playground. Frédéric Noirhomme’s outstanding cinematography follows Nora from her vantage point. There are no establishing or wide shots. It’s all close and personal; she’s barely off-screen during the entire film. And even when the camera turns to other characters, it’s done through over-the-shoulder shots or other astute composition techniques that make sure to never break out of Nora’s experience. This is further enhanced by handheld movements and masterful shallow-focus camerawork which create an intimate approach to the subject, as well as a disconcerting feeling of entering this new planet called school. It also gives the whole movie a blurry nature: it’s as if someone was trying to find his or her way back to this suppressed childhood memory.
And why would someone want to forget something like this? Besides experiencing a separation from his father, Nora will get a taste of the cruelty life has to offer. As she desperately tries to reunite with Abel during lunchtime, she inadvertently triggers the rage of a bully who sets his sights on the older brother, making his life a living hell for the next few days. Nora tries to help by calling for help from teachers, but as everyone who has attended school knows, this only makes things worse for Abel.
Somehow at her young age, Nora finds herself in a circle of fear and regret. One day she’s living peacefully at home, and the next she’s forced to witness her brother suffering horrific abuse which also starts to hurt her little burgeoning social life. When the grown-ups finally intervene, they try to solve things with handshakes and empty apologies. They don’t have a clue of how to treat the bullying disease which, of course, doesn’t disappear, it just transforms into other cruel forms. With clueless adults unable to find a solution, kids are forced to deal with the situation. It’s overwhelming and Wendel masterfully captures the discomfort, hopelessness, and innocence of it all. How the heck did we deal with that when we were kids?
Along the way, the director never loses sight of reality. Playground is an immersive experience full of details that give depth and authenticity to its story. We see Nora being hurt by the reckless boys playing soccer, a friend inventing stories about bodies buried in the sandbox, dumb fights stemmed from jealousy, big words like ‘racist’ being thrown around with innocence, and the spreading of little ideas with the power to create big confusion and prejudice.
Laura Wandel’s exceptional directing brings empathy to a blurry world that might be dismissed by some adults as nothing more than child’s play. Playground suggests that schools should find better systems to deal with the bullying problem and makes it clear that, despite their age, children can experience a great amount of love, suffering, remorse, joy, and misery; and early events that trigger negative emotions can be deeply damaging to them. It’s an impressive and outstanding feature debut, and one of the finest Oscar contenders at play.
‘Playground’ received the FIPRESCI Award at Cannes 2021, Best International Feature at the Guanajuato Film Festival 2021, and the Sutherland Award in the First Feature Competition at the BFI London Film Festival 2021. It’s representing Belgium at the 2022 International Oscar race.
Cover picture courtesy of THE PR FACTORY.
