Sometimes cinema is at its most potent and engrossing when it’s stripped down to the essentials. Playground, the accomplished, uncomfortably powerful first feature from the Belgian writer-director Laura Wandel, is a lean 72 minutes in length, with no score and a lithe, instinctive, handheld camera that rarely leaves the face of seven-year-old Nora (Maya Vanderbeque, superb). It is piercingly insightful without ever labouring the point.
The film Nora’s well-meaning attempt to intervene when she sees her older brother Abel (Günter Duret) targeted, exploring the way that bullying spreads like a stain through a primary and middle school community; how the taint of victimhood can override the bonds of friendship and family; and how doing the right thing can backfire catastrophically.
