A Brilliant Conflict

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

At first, "Les Enfants" ("The Children") sounds like a brilliant idea about to stir some thought-provoking debate on the importance of school to children and the learning process. But with time one learns to forget about expecting things and just let things follow their course; and as I was watching this movie the more I got horrified with almost everything thrown on the screen. Gladly, I didn't get any expectations about it except for maybe thinking "story looks good, Marguerite Duras is behind all of it, what can go wrong?". So many things, and it won't fit in this review as much as I'd like to. What got me into it, in the first place? The story of Ernesto, a 7 year-old boy who looks like a 40 year-old man, who shocks everyone around him when he decides to leave school, refusing to stay in a place where he only learns the things he doesn't know (if you've got confused with this sentence you can imagine Ernesto's parents reaction with that as well). The simple minded parents only accept the kid's resolution because they're old and dumb, and the "kid" isn't contained on a kid shape, he looks older and stronger and who knows what might happen. It gets weirder: Ernesto has a sister, same age as his and same problem, also looks like an adult. It's up to the school principal (Andre Dussolier) and a reporter to find out what's so peculiar about Ernesto, his actions - strangely learning things outside of school - and thoughts that evoke a strong sense of nihilism.We all know most kids have this phase of hating school, we've all been there and I think Mrs. Duras was trying to provoke a point by imagining what would be if a kid had enough arguments and wisdom to quit school and be on his own. The idea got lost, if ever existed. Somehow, the boy keeps on learning, returns to keep rejecting God's existence and exposes dull views about the importance of learning, to later gather everyone into peeling potatoes. Relevance? Zero.The symbolisms were poor, staging and scenes were just shallow and pitiful, and almost nothing got answered (what about the other five kids in the family? Where were they and how do they look like?), and the lack of conflict is amazing. And the more it progresses, the more you start to feel less and less involved with this wreck. Three awards at the Berlin Film Festival and among them a Silver Berlin Bear, an honorable mention for whatever reasons, and tied in one category with the impeccable and obscure "Wetherby". Throughout the movie, Ernesto describes that school is worthless (C'est pas la peine was the term if I'm not wrong). Same goes for this movie. 3/10

For this tale Duras takes as inspiration the Book of Ecclesiastes. Tangential as ever she never directly refers to it, but she does refer to the "book about the King of the Jews chasing the wind" (note in her short film Césarée, she never mentions the central figure of Berenice by name, merely referring to her as the "Queen of the Jews"). Ecclesiastes was a very resonant choice for Duras, having been introduced to it by a man she loved called Freddie. Never underestimate the amount of love Duras pours into a film! Ecclesiastes was written by an individual who identified himself as the King of Israel, and contains musings and aphorisms regarding the transitory nature of life and the futility of worldly aspirations. Qoheleth, as he is known (a title not a name), emphasises that the only pleasures to be taken in life are fairly immediate ones such as the satisfaction from hard work, and from eating and drinking. In Les Enfants, protagonist Ernesto (Axel Bogousslavsky) asks a group of people to join him in a glass of cider and the peeling of potatoes. It's in this spirit that Duras gifts a lovely piece of jazz music from Carlos d'Alessio near the end of the movie.Ernesto is a seven-year-old boy who has the body of a thirty-year-old man. He declares, upon attending his first day of school, that he no longer wishes to attend. The reason? He does not wishes to be taught things that he does not know. In a sort of educationalist moonlighting, following in the tradition established by Rousseau, Duras expounds upon the futility of education and its both Procrustean and coercive nature.The absence of extras is a peculiar feature of the film, which comes off as narcissistic. The school playground, when filmed, is entirely absent of children. Perhaps also the emptiness is symbolic, teaching has destroyed what a child is. The classroom a hall for brats at a spectacle, taught the inevitable truth (for Duras) of God's non-existence. Bright things that chase butterflies, sinning in innocence, turned into wanton gawpers.Duras' own rather fruity childhood and later educational path possibly informs her revolt against state-organised French education. She was born to a French couple in Indochina, an exotic and harsh place of expedient living. Her father died when she was four, and she was the creature of her depressive and occasionally abusive mother. In adolescence she became the lover of a wealthy Chinese man, as a response to the family's impoverished situation (these events are described in Rithy Panh's movie "The Sea Wall", adapted from Duras' novel). For this she was ostracised at her boarding school in Saigon. Educationally speaking she took her own path at the Sorbonne, where she dropped mathematics in favour of politics and then politics in favour of law. One of Ernesto's messages is that people must only learn to slake their craving for knowledge. He follows a similar interdisciplinary shuffle in his explorations into the boundaries of human knowledge. You don't learn unless you want to, I know people with degrees, who have learnt to pass the exam, but retained nothing, as if their lessons were mercury thrown on a glass slope. Such is the perversity of education.In an auditorium of perhaps ten people, we had I think four walkouts, which is a measure of the negativity in some of the statements made. Ernesto's mother thanks him at one point, not for relieving her loneliness, but for allowing her to see that it was natural, at another she mentions that, "Life never interested me". Yet if they had stayed I think they would have heard some positive notes. Until the end the film gets progressively darker in terms of the natural light, but in the end is quite beautiful, and Bruno Nyutten is to be congratulated on his photography, particularly the tracking shot along the fence and the lupins and circles. The entire film, although referencing fantastic events involving characters that occur elsewhere in the world during the story, is shot in peaceful and leafy Vitry-sur-Seine, Nyutten certainly grasps its exasperating tranquillity. Congratulations also to Axel Bogousslavsky and his incredibly expressive eyes, very convincing in his seven-year-old mannerisms.Although some suspect that God has disappeared from human thought, especially in secular France, Duras, via Ernesto was convinced that the God was a marcescent concept, stifling thinking even in its death. As long as man thinks of God, Ernesto says, human limits are fixed. The metaphor of this is when Ernesto's sister and mother sit down and discuss what to cook, running through a score of recipes that are just different ways of cooking potato.