Laura Wandel’s debut feature was Belgium’s official submission for the Oscars: a kid’s-eye-view nightmare of playground bullying impossible to watch without a sick, jittery feeling of rage and dread. The original French title is “Un Monde” – “A World” – and the playground is a universe of fear which we all edit out of our adult memories.
A rather amazing seven-year-old newcomer called Maya Vanderbeque stars as Nora, seen mostly in extreme, searching closeup. Just the opening shot of her crying face supplies pretty much enough emotional charge to power the whole film. Nora is just starting school, and her sobbing mini-drama-queen distress at the school gates discomforts her dad (Karim Leklou) and especially her older brother Abel (Günter Duret), a wannabe tough guy who doesn’t want his clingy kid sister embarrassing him in the playground. When she witnesses him being bullied by the other boys – with whom Abel had hoped to bully someone else – she tells the teachers and her dad, thus humiliating him and breaking a whole unwritten statute book about not snitching.
