Un monde

Bullying has become a big subject in the last 20 years, but this film tells a great story from the perspective of two children who are each victims of it. With the Dardenne brothers and others, the Belgians have redefined the social landscape of Italian neorealism.

This is a gritty story about the sociology of a school playground. It's also an account of love. Do you remember your school playground? How did we get out alive?

This is really a very remarkable film. Exploring the group dynamics of school children, director Laura Wandel has taken the radical choice of positioning her camera at children's height, registering only what children see. Adults are reduced to supporting roles, and they are only visible when they occupy themselves directly with Nora, the heroine of Un Monde, played amazingly by 9 year old Maya Vanderbeque.

Not only the way Wandel shows us what children see makes this film special. The script is also very clever in explaining how the mechanics of bullying can really make young children desperate, and how it is almost impossible to find a solution using adult logic. It is almost a cliché to say that children can be very cruel, but this film shows why and how it happens.

The almost documentary filming style, with lots of close-ups, is impressive. In one crucial scene, the camera focuses for several mintues on Nora's face, while she registers what's going on around her. The viewer hears what she hears, but sees only her face. The result is spectacular.

This film can easily stand next to the other great documentary-style film about school life, 'Entre les murs'. That film was nominated for an Oscar. 'Un Monde' is the Belgian entry for the Oscar race. It deserves at least a nomination.

Bullying is such a tricky difficult issue to solve especially among kids. It's complicated not only because it's hard to discover if some kid is objected and suffers from it among his collogues but also because the subjected can easily transform into the new bully as an act of respond by transforming the anger into violence, and that is what PLAYGROUND portrayed effectively and painfully here.

I've never seen anything quite like this film before. It is so truthful it could easily pass for a documentary about the life of young schoolchildren. But it is also as skilful a piece of storytelling as any mainsteam movie. Above all, it contains within it an unspoken but ever-present warning that , unless we're careful, we can end up fighting playground battles all our lives.