Une enfance

What a true drama, dark, gripping, but not hopeless film, about a young kid and his little brother who have to survive among a broken family. They both have a very young unemployed and drug addicted mother - in her late twenties at the most - who lives with a lousy drug addicted and also unemployed prick - and not the father of the two. A real SOB. You have already understood that it is a pure drama, a social movie describing with a realistic way how the poor people have to fight every day to make it in the modern world. The today way of life. You have here a poignant sequence where the poor mother shouts at her son that he is responsible for her to be so miserable. And the little boy grabs her mom and hugs her into his arms. Very touching sequence. A beautiful film.

During a particularly difficult summer, Jimmy, a 13-year-old boy, is forced to grow up in order to fight the misfortunes of his life.

It's part of the genre in which the story is the main factor, and the way we look at it and interpret it. It is quite slow, perhaps boring for many people, but it is part of the way the plot unfolds, and what it is like to be in the shoes of someone who has no dreams, goals or even a home.

The dialogues are not elaborated, they go straight for what's important, and that's a good thing for the film, which lives on the simplicity and humanity of the people it portrays.

It should be noted that the cast features professional and amateur actors, and the gap between them is hardly noticed.

The social problems scrutinized in Une Enfance are transversal to several European societies (and in several other parts of the globe), however, I feel that it is one of those melodramas that always work better in French, I cannot explain why.

It is more than a social drama. It is not only a realistic portrait of tough childhood. It is just a honest verdict of profound crisis defining families, from drug addiction to the mediocre parenthood. A story about survive and fair reflection of precise perception and definition of near reality by a child, the dialogue being the basic tool.