Playground

Film - 2021

7,8

36.1K

Playground it's a movie with Maya Vanderbeque, Günter Duret, Karim Leklou, Laura Verlinden, Thao Maerten Full cast. Directed by Laura Wandel. Original title Un monde, runtime 72 minutes. Genre Drama.

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Review of

Emiliano Baglio

Let's face it clearly, Laura Wandel's debut film owes a lot to the cinema of the Dardenne Brothers. Hand-held camera perpetually attached to the characters, in turn almost always shot from three-quarter angles, rigorously at child's height so much so that in most of the shots you can see only from the bust up. There seem to be two imperatives that the director has set for herself; concentrate and eliminate. Keeping true to its original title, her debut initially transports us into a microcosm; the elementary school of Nora (Maya Vanderbeque) and her older brother Abel (Günter Duret). For the little girl, these are her first days and she thinks she can count on her brother who, however, is a victim of bullying. Outside of school school practically does not seem to exist other than the increasingly elusive presence of the father of the two children (Karim Leclou). It is a real process for which, progressively, Laura Wandel almost seems to proceed in concentric circles that always focus on more on the detail or on Nora, the real center of the entire story. The rest is eliminated step by step, first of all with precise aesthetic choices. Beyond the character framed, as we said from close range, everything else is almost always out of focus, reduced to shadows and even more so to sounds. Sound, after all, plays a fundamental role. Often having to address the two excellent debuting actors directly, Laura Wandel reconstructed the film's soundtrack almost entirely in the studio , imagining it, as she herself explains, as a sort of musical score composed of ambient noises and the omnipresent cries of children. The same importance is given to the dialogues and the fundamental use of off-screen starting from the violence which, of done, it is almost never seen. Take, for example, the scene in which the bullies apologize to Abel. In the frame there is only him while Read all

A parallel but real world of

Cap

With a simple and direct film, torn from everyday reality, Wandel represents the complexity of the "world" of children, the one indicated by the original title, parallel to that of adults, who seem to inhabit it casually. Read all

Enrico Vigorito

Mirella Battaglia

plot

When Nora witnesses Abel being bullied by other kids, she rushes to protect him by warning their father. But Abel forces her to remain silent. Caught in a conflict of loyalty, Nora will ultimately try to find her place, torn between children’s and adult’s worlds.