Direction: Laura Wandel
Country: Belgium
Laura Wandel’s debut feature, Playground, is an interesting drama that explores the brutal psychological effects of bullying. Over the course of its simple, carefully calibrated 72 minutes, we follow the seven-year-old Nora (Maya Vanderbeque), an anguished and vigilante first grader with big sad eyes, who worries about the boys’ fights. This is because her older brother, Abel (Günter Duret), is invariably picked on by bullies in the playground.
Wandel places the camera too close to the subjects, and the pace dangerously slows down to a crawl in certain scenes, especially those not including the playground. She captures moments that seem either irrelevant or stretched, meaning that the film could be further shortened with no loss of information. Still, it’s a dramatization that invites us to see beyond the appearances, bringing attention to a relevant topic while showing the deep concern of parents and the blatant inability of school committees to effectively take care of the problem.
While the result is not earth-shattering, there's something emotionally and compassionately connective underneath. There’s no external characterization of the kids - we don’t have access to their home environments or relationships with parents. Hence, you’re stuck in the miniature context of a playground where the adults' supervision is deficient. Both kid actors are strong.
