It's Not Me, I Swear!

A film set in Quebec in 1968. Léon is ten. He goes into the neighbours' gardens, breaks things, gets into houses, and says he did nothing when he is caught. His family is about to come apart. His parents do not speak, the dinners are silent, and the boy watches it every day. One day his mother leaves. She moves to France and leaves a note behind. Léon will not accept it. From there the film is a story of waiting. The boy writes letters, telephones, lies, and goes further each time. He tries to hang himself. The scene is shot like comedy, and that is exactly what makes it frightening. The neighbour's girl, Lea, understands him. She is dealing with her own family, and the two of them make a plan. The father's line is sad. He loves his son but does not know how to talk to him, and every attempt is left unfinished. What the narrative is interested in is not misbehaviour but attention: everything Léon does is so that someone will notice, and nobody does. The tone works because it is unsteady. The narrative wanders between comedy and a serious collapse and holds both in the same scene. The period is visible. Quebec approaching the 1970s, the radio, the furniture and the clothes are inside the narrative. The child actor is the film's spine. The narrative gives him the whole weight and he is in nearly every scene. The source is Bruno Hébert's novels. Antoine L'Écuyer, Suzanne Clément and Daniel Brière are in the cast. Philippe Falardeau directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes films about childhood with dark humour. Who it is not for: anyone who cannot take scenes of a child harming himself; the film shows them in a light tone and that is disturbing.