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IFFR 2022 Big Screen Competition

Review: Third Grade

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- Jacques Doillon’s feature film is an intimate and sensitive social drama exploring the theme of childhood

Review: Third Grade
Roxane Barazzuo and Cyril Sader in Third Grade

Presented in the Big Screen competition of the most recent International Film Festival Rotterdam, Jacques Doillon’s new movie Third Grade is a social drama exploring the subject of childhood, a time in our lives to which the French director cyclically returns in the works. It’s a film which continues in the great tradition of Transalpine productions dedicated to the younger years, which kicked off with The 400 Blows by François Truffaut, was continued by L’Enfance Nue – Naked Childhood by Maurice Pialat and Mes petites amoureuses by Jean Eustache, and which ultimately led to Ponette, which is one of Doillon’s most famous films.

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In this instance, the protagonists move within the microcosm of the French provinces where little Claire (Roxane Barazzuo) is molested by her peer Kevin (Cyril Sader) at school in Clermont-Ferrand. But what appears to be a classic story of school-based abuse actually results in a friendship, albeit a problematic and occasionally painful one. Doillon’s narrative style gives us time to breathe; he allows space and freedom for the dialogues between children to unfold, and he keeps the camera at their height, sensitively tackling relationships between parents and children, as well as between people from different social classes who are forced to rub along in the unique melting pot that is the school playground, which is often the case in the provinces. The biggest difference between Claire and Kevin is, indeed, their class, though the director has the foresight to sidestep Manichean clichés, astutely reconstructing the social milieus of the adults in question, to whom he lends a healthy dose of alienation, which echoes with the characters put forth by another great filmmaker from the French provinces, Bruno Dumont. It’s a form of alienation which is visible in the character of Kevin’s dad (played by Alexis Manenti, once again playing the part of a threatening yet fragile middle-aged man, like in Ladj Ly’s Misérables [+see also:
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) - who is both victim and perpetrator, like his son, and an aggressive and immature socially marginalised soul - and in that of Claire’s mum (played by Nora Hamzawi), who is both fearful of and enthralled by the world around her.

The absence of music - which can only be heard in the film’s more intimate scenes - further heightens the estrangement experienced by these characters, who are struggling to free themselves from gender roles imposed by society, as if trapped in cages with clearly defined limits. It’s a struggle which begins, moreover, at school, with all the childhood trauma this entails, not least the tricky task of living with the restrictive measures imposed by adults as a result of Covid, which are an increasing common feature in modern-day films (see Jude and Gomes/Fazendeiro’s latest works) and which confirm Doillon’s desire to focus on the modern-day after a brief historical parenthesis giving rise to the biopic Rodin [+see also:
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trailer
film profile
]
(2017). Unlike in his previous film, however, the director leaves formal and static classicism behind in favour of a more realistic, modern approach, resulting in this lower budget work which nonetheless looks to tell a deep tale, graciously depicting the intimacy and contradictions of family relationships within an ever-evolving, modern society. This latest movie confirms that the films of Jacques Doillon, whose career has never enjoyed the international attention it deserves, are alive, full of good prospects and insights, and never slide into the mortifying heaviness of bland exposé cinema which is currently blighting the contemporary European landscape.

Third Grade is produced by Arena Films Paris, with international sales managed by Kinology and French distribution by Apollo Films.

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(Translated from Italian)

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