The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

While watching this Movie, I was repeatably thinking about, if this Movie was a live-documentation or all set up... But more then this I did like this fine feeling of the director for the kids - amazing! Only a few movies are able, to let me feel like a child again; this one did the best. I mean, I just did not only remember my childhood, with this movie, I really was a child while watching it! Finally, the movie gives you such a close look into happily unhappy child's that you don't know, if you should smile or cry... If someone does not understand this movie and walked out, then he or she should take a closer look to all the awards of the director an then think again - maybe not the movie is wrong, but maybe the one who walked out? Just great! Thanks for that movie!

This is an exquisite tone poem about childhood, and abandonment, and freedom. I saw this a year ago and still can't get it out of my mind. Isild le Besco, perhaps the most gifted actress of her generation in France, and the most haunting screen presence, shows herself to be a greatly gifted director as well. She has crafted a delicate and very moving story from the simplest of elements. It's a film that in many ways reminds me of Truffaut's "The Four Hundred Blows." Without much in the way of exposition or dialogue, we enter into the minds of the parentless kids as they move about Paris hustling to stay alive and in school. It gives a wonderful feeling of the city, as seen from the level of a child's eye, and of how the world looks to children who are trying to navigate life without the usual protection of adults. I was entranced

Telling the story of a "different family" from the viewpoint of one of the children, this is an extremely light and "little" film. Somewhere between Truffaut's "Les Quatre Cents Coups" and Pippi Longstocking. Entirely shot with a DV camera, with the director's apartment as the set and casting her brother in one of the main characters. It was funny and entertaining while watching at it while it grew deeper after a while, hours after, leaving me with a slight anxiety, in fact. It is something that I would call a fake-umentary, that forces all the time the viewers to remember to themselves that they are watching a feature film and not a TV reportage. In my opinion the fact that the director "refers" all the time to both TV documentaries and home videos is one of the most interesting side of this film. Just go and see it unless you are the kind who thinks that special effects are a must.

This film was shown at this year's Sydney Film Festival as 'Half-Price'. I'm afraid I can't give a complete and proper review because I walked out on it after watching just over half of it. And I wasn't alone, as I noticed twenty or so other people leaving at the same time. I swear I heard the phrases "rats leaving a sinking ship" and "women and children first" in the foyer as people left. This is in fact the first time I've ever walked out on a movie, so that tells you something. I have no idea whether the film finds a way to justify itself in the end, but it had already used up all of my patience. I presume the director was trying to show us something about the lives of children when they're alone together by filming them up close, letting them do their own thing, and not including anything else that would intrude (such as a plot or dialogue). But from what I sat through, no matter what the pretentious intentions or justifications behind the film are, all that you're left with is the kind of boredom you'd get from watching someone else's particularly dull home movies of their kids. We're told very little about their lives, so we're left to watch their behaviour without any useful context. They listen to music, laugh, and go to the toilet. So what! Apart from the fact that the kids play together, we don't even get a feel for the bonds between them. This is really only bearable for a short while. By the 30-minute mark I was bored out of my skull. And when you're that bored, you start to question the point of watching scenes of kids sitting on the toilet, or hanging around the house naked while playing music. It's a lot like having someone show you pictures of their kids. If there are a couple of embarrassing photos in there - their kid naked in the bath or something - that's fine. But if it turns out that a whole heap of the photos are of their kids naked in the bath, then it can become plain weird and uncomfortable, and you start wondering why the person showing them to you doesn't realise it. It seems that I'm the first person to review this movie on IMDb. Hopefully someone who's sat through the whole thing will come along and write the second one, which might be more helpful than mine. But in the meantime, my advice would be to give this one a miss.