Children

A short British film set in Liverpool. Robert Tucker is a child. He is at a Catholic school and the school is hell. The narrative does not run straight. Three times are folded together. The first is the school years. The other boys beat him, the teachers use a cane, and nobody intervenes. The second is home. The father is violent; he beats the mother and the children. The third is adulthood. Robert is grown and sitting in a hospital corridor. From there the film moves between memories. From one scene to another, without warning. The connection is emotional. The images sit next to each other not by chronology but because they carry the same pain. Robert becomes aware of his own sexuality. He cannot tell anyone, and that he cannot has been taught to him. The narrative gives this not as a discovery but as a burden. The father dies in hospital. The mother is beside him. What the narrative is interested in is not childhood but continuity: its idea is that this man is not remembering something in the past; he is still living all of it at once. There is very little speech. The narrative proceeds through faces, light and silence. The images are black and white and nearly motionless. The camera stays in the same frame for long stretches. The running time is under forty minutes. This is Terence Davies's first film and the first part of his trilogy; the other two parts were made in later years and follow the same character. It was made with support from the British Film Institute on a very small budget. Davies always said he was working from his own childhood. Phillip Mawdsley, Robin Hooper and Nick Stringer are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes British experimental cinema and autobiographical narrative. Who it is not for: anyone looking for story; the film builds no plot and its tone is heavy throughout.