La classe de neige

Most definitely one of the best movies I've ever seen, a bit on the strange side sometimes, but a very moving film. camera work excellent, the acting is amazing, and very well directed. not a well known movie, but a very good one.

A very humane and insightful piece of work, this film is really an examination of how a boy escapes the bizarre world that his father has created for him. The acting is excellent, the plotting is surprising and the whole film has a feel that is as crisp as the freshly fallen Alpine snows. Some parts of this film might seem to meander but don't let that put you off this movie - the last few minutes justify waiting through some of the character and plot development in the middle.

If anyone likes to discuss this film feel free to mail me, in English or in French.

I agree with most other reviewers in liking this movie, but I disagree with almost everything they say about it. First of all, it is not hard to follow, nor is it at all hard to tell what is real and what is not. The plot is actually fairly simple, and warning that it is so complex that you have to watch it twice and answer half a dozen or more convoluted questions before you get it is absurd.

It's also absurd to imply that you have to understand Freudian psychobabble to understand this movie. I don't know why people think they have to make a movie sound so hard to watch when it is not hard to watch at all.

I also disagree that this is a sad, solemn movie, and that there's no humor in it. The humor is dark humor (very dark), but there's a good bit of it, as when Nicolas imagines making out with the teacher and when the hooded terrorists swarm over the school mowing everybody down with machine guns while Nicolas calmly eats food the other kids have left behind in panic. Even the scars the camera zooms in on so often and Nic's father's antics and horror stories about organ pirates are funny. It's macabre, but it's very funny.

And the twist at the end? What twist? The end was obvious almost from the beginning of the movie. This is a movie, not a psychology test or an inscrutable riddle or even much of a thriller. It's a very smart, very dark comedy about children and crazy parents. In trying to over-analyze it, people miss its fun. Lighten up and enjoy it.

Screenplay coauthored by Miller and Emmanuel Carrière from the latter's successful and disquieting little mystery-thriller novel about an overprotected, highly sensitive boy whose dreams and fantasies of danger while on a stay in the mountains with his school may or may not presage real events.

Such a movie has plusses and minuses: it allows the filmmakers to bring the feverish visions of young Nicolas (Clément ven den Bergh) to vivid life, but it somewhat undermines the sense of uncertainty about what is real or imagined that makes the book effective.

The boy is stronger than I imagined him reading the story. Let's say that the actor puts on a face of shyness and gloom but I don't quite believe it. Still, as a viewer commented on the French website Allociné, "I feel this film does not betray the book." Apparently not shown widely or at all in the US. Beautifully done with excellent restraint, true to the book's muted style, a minor triumph for the underwhelming Miller, whose last admired film was The Little Thief/La petite voleuse with Charlotte Gainsbourg in 1988. Tied for Jury Prize at Cannes, nominated for Golden Palm.

I wanted to see this because I'd read the book. Easy French. This brought it all back, but wasn't quite as disturbing because you know the fantasies are fantasies, every time. In the book it's from the boy's point of view and you aren't always so sure. Lots of closeups of ven den Bergh's face don't make us see entirely through his eyes. It's all more externalized. Still, a nicely modulated mood piece, an excellent evocation of the darker side of childhood imagination. It's not so easy to be a kid. We forget that sometimes.

Much of the advance publicity for this quiet little slice of a child's life seem as if it's going to be sadism in the school and kids doing cloak and dagger work; neither is really true of this film, although there is a major discovery to be made as the main character (subtly etched by a preteen with an appealing sensitivity) negotiates his way among the strangers he is suddenly stuck with when his parents pop him down in a children's winter camp.

The lad has visions, but not without reason, and once seen, all the disparate pieces fit very nicely indeed; there is a fascinating music score that ranges from Rock to Rossini, and if I haven't said a good deal about what happens, it's because what happens to the boy is a mystery: the wish bracelet he wears tells the story. This is not a fast-paced thriller, but a contemplative voyage into a child's mind, crossed with elements of a classic mystery.