Enfances (2008)
Directed by Ismaël Ferroukhi, Corinne Garfin

Film Review

The premise of this episodic film certainly has some merit, although the obvious inexperience of some of the contributors prevents it from being as effective and as satisfying as it might have been.  Enfances doesn't really have much of an impact until the first three segments are out of the way.  Although these first segments (on Renoir, Welles and Tati) are competently realised, it is hard to make the connection between the story and the director portrayed within.  These three segments are, to put it bluntly, so bland that they are soon forgotten.  All this changes with an abrupt jolt when we get onto the fourth segment.

The Hitchcock anecdote is the most stylish and cheekiest of the six, shot in the beautifully atmospheric film noir style of the director's early American films, but with an underlying dark humour.  The dreamlike quality, the unsettling merging of reality and fantasy, serves the story admirably and you can believe this is how Hitchcock might have portrayed his childhood on screen if he had been so inclined.

Equally impressive is the Fritz Lang sequence, the most poignant and convincing of the six short films.  In the role of the young Fritz Lang, Virgil Leclaire shows great promise and is the only one of the child actors in the film who looks as if he might have a great film career ahead of him.  The ending of this short film is particularly heart-rending and is easy to relate to what most people know about Fritz Lang's subsequent life and career.

The most interesting and best-directed of the six films is the last one, recounting a particularly sinister incident in the early life of Ingmar Bergman.  Who would have thought that the director of The Seventh Seal would have tried to suffocate his baby sister?   This stunning short film evokes the odd mix of nostalgic warmth, austerity and malevolance that we find in Bergman's Fanny and Alexander and is the one film of the six that is definitely worth watching.

Film Synopsis

Six short films, each relating an anecdote from the childhood of a world-famous film director...

La paire de chaussures (by Ismaël Ferroukhi)
Jean, the son of a prosperous middle-class family, spends his summer holidays in the country.  One year, he meets Godefer, a boy of his own age who lives alone in the forest.   Jean offers his new friend a new pair of shoes and, in return, Godefer opens his eyes to a new world...

Le regard d'un enfant (by Isild Le Besco)
When his mother falls seriously ill, young Orson is devastated.  Convinced that she will not die whilst he watches over her, the young boy begins his long vigil beside his mother's bed...

Open the door, please (by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige)
Aged 12, Jacques is the tallest boy in his class, which poses a problem when the school photograph has to be taken...

Short Night (by Corinne Garfin)
Alfred is a boy who is obsessed with the theatre.  He collects pictures of famous actresses and pastes them in his scrapbook, his most treasured possession.  One day, his tyrannical mother discovers that he has soiled his bed.  When she finds the scrapbook, she scolds her son and throws it onto the fire.  Late one evening, young Alfred awakes to find the house deserted.  In the kitchen lies the body of a dead woman...

Un secret derrière la porte (by Yann Le Gal)
Fritz is barely ten years old but he has already formed a favourable opinion on anti-Semitic politics in his native Austria.  When his parents decide to remarry, he becomes suspicious and suspects that his father is a Jew... 

Une naissance (by Safy Nebbou)
Two brothers lead an idyllic childhood, loved by their parents, happy in their routine.  All this changes when they acquire a baby sister.  How much better things were before the baby arrived, they think.  How much better things would be if the baby were to go as suddenly as she came...