I thought this was amazing. It brought back a lot of feelings and experiences I thought I’d forgotten.
Playground is not a psychological drama, per se, but it could be. Belgian director Laura Wandel’s jarring debut feature plunges headlong into the world of school-aged children and observes their dynamics with chilling precision. It generously studies its subjects — children, bullying, adults confronting the implications of the latter — and extracts haunting conclusions about the Darwinian nature of ostensibly idyllic settings.
(Girls Girls Girls in Finnish, and released with that title in England)
How do you hope people feel once they’ve finished watching the film?
I hope that they feel like these girls’ lives actually really continue after the film. That’s kind of like the last shot. I want them to feel like life goes on. I want them to love them and then love themselves. I hate the phrase feel good, but the truth is, it’s a feel good film. I want people to feel good. Also, it’s a very political film. In Finland, I’ve had the opportunity of having many screenings with people where it opens a conversation. In many cases, it opens a really big box, a Pandora’s box, if you will, for some audience members. They’ll say, “I’m disturbed about how long I was waiting for something bad to happen. What’s wrong with me? Why am I so biased that I think something really terrible has to happen to these women? Why am I expecting it?”
Many people talk to me about how they feel seen for the first time. Both the writers, the cast, and I have encountered people who come crying after the film talking about their asexuality and how they’ve never ever seen a character depicted with any level of that on screen. So I hope that it opens a conversation. It definitely brought a lot of very positive feelings to people. To me, it is obviously a very, very beautiful thing that there are so many people who have identified with it and felt really emotional about it. But that also makes me quite angry. That it’s such a big thing, that so many people have said it was the first time they felt seen. I don’t even have words for how that shouldn’t be in 2022.
Thanks but no thanks. If I would have thought this video needed tk be posted I would have done so.
Enjoy the next videos YouTube’s algorithm will queue up for you.
So I saw this review on my phone without the picture at the top and I thought to myself “I bet the squaddie will be Black”. Because the squaddie is always Black in English films about the occupation in NI. Why? Black squaddies were really fucking rare actually. (source: the fucking streets).
How many of the Soldier No.1s (etc.) that people are attempting to get justice for their murder or torture were Black (narrator: not a fucking one to the best of my knowledge). So why is the Black Squaddie the stock character in English films about NI?
