I work in the field, and have seen almost every dysfunctional, antisocial, nasty behavior shown here in the last month. And the children look so innocent! This film is based in French-Canadian part of Canada, and that surprised me as I've seen a limited number in French; Bach and Broccoli, Leolo, C'est pas moi mostly dealing with disturbed children. The story is predictable in outline, but breathtaking in the presentation. The kid is in the system, but you don't know for sure if it's nature or nurture. Just like in real life it's usually a combination of both; kids with attention and impulse control problems have a higher incidence of getting beaten by parents who had the same problems and were beaten themselves. Kids with mood disorders can be AWOL and raise hell one day, and be depressed and suicidal the next. Medication can help if done correctly, but with children it is tricky and sometimes does more harm than good. The psychiatrist in this film was poor. The building was poor. The supervision was awful. The Social Worker's only clue was to try and establish a positive relationship with the kid, and was at least helpful. While not an overly optimistic view of childcare it's at least realistic, and shows the limitations of we mere mortals. The two leads were more than adequate, and occasionally brilliant. This film should be required watching for anyone seeking employment with disturbed children.
5 Reviews
A well-crafted work
griz-259-1751008 April 2012
Warning: Spoilers
This movie is perhaps more education than entertainment. It is not an easy movie to watch because of the subject matter. Those who have been psychologically abused by parents may find themselves too easily drawn in and identifying with the plight of the young lead. Those who have not, may find it hard to believe that such thing happen; or shocked at how devastatingly the dysfunctions of the parents can become magnified in vulnerable children.
Young Tommy is the victim of an upbringing heavily seasoned with drug abuse, neglect, psychological abuse and mental illness. Easy access to porn videos entices him to recruit a younger boy into a sexual experiment he's still too young to understand and this ends up with his being brutally beaten by his victim's older brother. This lands Tommy in a high-security youth treatment centre -- with an incredibly hard defensive shell for the social workers to crack.
The combination of acting and directing is chillingly superb; making it easy to forget one is watching a performance an not a documentary. Everyone from the young lead to the supporting adult actors give amazing performances. The tantrums and the scenes of confinement are difficult to watch; but one cannot turn away. The ending is superbly executed -- leaving you wanting more, yet also content that a good path has been started. This is a movie that hopefully will have a lasting bittersweet impact on most viewers.
Young Tommy is the victim of an upbringing heavily seasoned with drug abuse, neglect, psychological abuse and mental illness. Easy access to porn videos entices him to recruit a younger boy into a sexual experiment he's still too young to understand and this ends up with his being brutally beaten by his victim's older brother. This lands Tommy in a high-security youth treatment centre -- with an incredibly hard defensive shell for the social workers to crack.
The combination of acting and directing is chillingly superb; making it easy to forget one is watching a performance an not a documentary. Everyone from the young lead to the supporting adult actors give amazing performances. The tantrums and the scenes of confinement are difficult to watch; but one cannot turn away. The ending is superbly executed -- leaving you wanting more, yet also content that a good path has been started. This is a movie that hopefully will have a lasting bittersweet impact on most viewers.
Every child should get second chance.
andriikoropets5 October 2016
Firstly, I need to say that team(director, actors...) did great stuff. I have never seen such movie before. And want to thank for such film cause it shows that not everything is well in our life. I see that during shooting psychiatrists were involved and showed us real dregs' of society life.
Have been shown properly the connection between sex and aggression.
You cannot make good by applying strict and violence. I mean, nevertheless child so bad behaved we always must show him the another way otherwise he would reject the whole world and we will have replenishment in crime in future when this child grows up.
If I were that teacher I would behave myself even more discreetly with such boy.
Have been shown properly the connection between sex and aggression.
You cannot make good by applying strict and violence. I mean, nevertheless child so bad behaved we always must show him the another way otherwise he would reject the whole world and we will have replenishment in crime in future when this child grows up.
If I were that teacher I would behave myself even more discreetly with such boy.
Childhood can be disturbing
p.newhouse@talk21.com10 August 2014
Warning: Spoilers
This film is not entertainment, it is education. it tackles a very difficult subject in a detached, non-judgemental way, and the director achieves the feel of a fly on the wall documentary, which is exactly right for the tone of the piece. A small boy called Tommy does something dreadful to a smaller boy at the beginning of the film, and the film follows Tommy (Robert Naylor), who is already known to social services, in the aftermath. Tommy's story is told through flashbacks, and through the research his newly assigned Educator (Keyworker), Gilles (played by Claude Legault) does. The acting is superb, and the subject matter so well researched that the complexity of Tommy leaves you torn between hating him for what he did, and wanting to hug him and tell him everything is going to be OK. There are other characters, but they mostly serve as plot tools. Some of the scenes are extremely harrowing, but taken in context, you will see that they are necessary to the story.
Pulls no punches but fails to deliver a knockout
dannydenshaw15 June 2015
Warning: Spoilers
Having heard many positive reports about this film I sought it out for months. Although I'd have been happy to pay for a download or a copy on optical media I eventually had to resort to underhand methods of online acquisition -- and then, finding the Canadian French dialogue and its Quebecois argot incomprehensible, go on a further search for subtitles.
Was it worth the effort? For me, certainly; but I stop short of recommending it to others.
The story, such as it is, centres around 10 year-old Tommy Leblanc (played with outstanding skill and sensitivity by a 13 year-old Robert Naylor). Tommy is from a broken home, a thorn in the side of social services. He is short-fused, violent, inappropriately sexualised and gets sent to (what we in the UK call) a secure unit, or locked children's home, for assessment.
The question posed is whether young Tommy is a hopeless psychopath in the making or whether he can respond to the professional help from the well-intentioned but overstretched staff at the unit.
The signs don't auger well. Within minutes of the opening title we've seen Tommy masturbating to a hard-core porno-movie, forcing a younger boy to commit an act of gross indecency and then getting his face beaten to a (sickeningly realistic) pulp by that kid's older brother. (I did say that this film pulls no punches, didn't I?) Then within days of his arrival at the home, he's kicking off in the face of the staff's best efforts to support him, smashing the place up and creating a thoroughly nasty atmosphere for both his carers and the other volatile young boys resident there.
Personally, I found Robert Naylor's performance (ably supported by Claude Legault's portrayal of his sympathetic but long-suffering key-worker) heart-wrenching and deeply moving; but then I'm a teacher of kids with emotional and behavioural disorders. I can quite understand how, to anyone without a special interest in child psychology, Tommy would come across as an insufferable little brat who deserved what was coming to him -- negating what, I assume, is the fundamental message of the film.
I'm not knocking it. Daniel Grou's direction is first-class and the cinematography, using hand-held cameras that give the piece that air of a reality TV show, together create the grim aura of a facility for disturbed youth with considerable aplomb. And however one views him, Tommy comes across as real -- scarily so. Could this really be a child actor depicting so vividly the rage and panic descending into desperation for a badly damaged little boy? But in my view this is in spite of rather than thanks to the screenplay. Convincing though the characters' emotional responses may be, they all lack depth as people. There is little development of either the characters or the narrative, despite the manifest opportunities to do so.
Given that the film is clearly well-researched and skilfully constructed, I can only assume that this was intentional on author Claude Lalonde's part. And, fair dues, in real-life situations such as these, the players often do come across as two-dimensional; nothing particularly interesting does happen beyond things getting broken, staff getting stressed and tempers getting frayed. But this is not reality TV. It's a screenplay, a feature film, and I guess in that context I hope for just a l'il bit more.
And if you're not going to use the wonderful potential of Tommy's inadequate beatnik father (for whose portrayal Martin Dubreuil deserves an honourable mention) and his mentally ill mother as vehicles to develop the narrative then why bother to introduce them as nothing more than failed parental stereotypes? Not to mention Tommy's encounter with the paedophile Nomand towards the end which could have been (and may have been intended as) a thoughtful counterpoise to the opening scene but in the event was an all-too-predictable and meaningless throw-away.
As for the ending, what an underwhelming anti-climax! It may have addressed, in part, the question posed at the beginning but I think most of us had worked that one out mid-way through the film. This is not an easy movie to watch: it's disturbing -- harrowing in parts -- and to fob an audience off with such a weak finale isn't "minimalist" in my view; it's a con.
Nevertheless, this is a powerful piece of cinema and, though it won't be for everyone, it deserves wider distribution and recognition than it has.
Was it worth the effort? For me, certainly; but I stop short of recommending it to others.
The story, such as it is, centres around 10 year-old Tommy Leblanc (played with outstanding skill and sensitivity by a 13 year-old Robert Naylor). Tommy is from a broken home, a thorn in the side of social services. He is short-fused, violent, inappropriately sexualised and gets sent to (what we in the UK call) a secure unit, or locked children's home, for assessment.
The question posed is whether young Tommy is a hopeless psychopath in the making or whether he can respond to the professional help from the well-intentioned but overstretched staff at the unit.
The signs don't auger well. Within minutes of the opening title we've seen Tommy masturbating to a hard-core porno-movie, forcing a younger boy to commit an act of gross indecency and then getting his face beaten to a (sickeningly realistic) pulp by that kid's older brother. (I did say that this film pulls no punches, didn't I?) Then within days of his arrival at the home, he's kicking off in the face of the staff's best efforts to support him, smashing the place up and creating a thoroughly nasty atmosphere for both his carers and the other volatile young boys resident there.
Personally, I found Robert Naylor's performance (ably supported by Claude Legault's portrayal of his sympathetic but long-suffering key-worker) heart-wrenching and deeply moving; but then I'm a teacher of kids with emotional and behavioural disorders. I can quite understand how, to anyone without a special interest in child psychology, Tommy would come across as an insufferable little brat who deserved what was coming to him -- negating what, I assume, is the fundamental message of the film.
I'm not knocking it. Daniel Grou's direction is first-class and the cinematography, using hand-held cameras that give the piece that air of a reality TV show, together create the grim aura of a facility for disturbed youth with considerable aplomb. And however one views him, Tommy comes across as real -- scarily so. Could this really be a child actor depicting so vividly the rage and panic descending into desperation for a badly damaged little boy? But in my view this is in spite of rather than thanks to the screenplay. Convincing though the characters' emotional responses may be, they all lack depth as people. There is little development of either the characters or the narrative, despite the manifest opportunities to do so.
Given that the film is clearly well-researched and skilfully constructed, I can only assume that this was intentional on author Claude Lalonde's part. And, fair dues, in real-life situations such as these, the players often do come across as two-dimensional; nothing particularly interesting does happen beyond things getting broken, staff getting stressed and tempers getting frayed. But this is not reality TV. It's a screenplay, a feature film, and I guess in that context I hope for just a l'il bit more.
And if you're not going to use the wonderful potential of Tommy's inadequate beatnik father (for whose portrayal Martin Dubreuil deserves an honourable mention) and his mentally ill mother as vehicles to develop the narrative then why bother to introduce them as nothing more than failed parental stereotypes? Not to mention Tommy's encounter with the paedophile Nomand towards the end which could have been (and may have been intended as) a thoughtful counterpoise to the opening scene but in the event was an all-too-predictable and meaningless throw-away.
As for the ending, what an underwhelming anti-climax! It may have addressed, in part, the question posed at the beginning but I think most of us had worked that one out mid-way through the film. This is not an easy movie to watch: it's disturbing -- harrowing in parts -- and to fob an audience off with such a weak finale isn't "minimalist" in my view; it's a con.
Nevertheless, this is a powerful piece of cinema and, though it won't be for everyone, it deserves wider distribution and recognition than it has.
See also
Awards | FAQ | User Ratings | External Reviews | Metacritic Reviews
