Sound and Fury

Thirteen-year-old Bruno spends his days alone in a fantasy world of his own because his mother is at work. Since his grandmother died there is nobody in the house. At school he becomes friends with Jean-Roger, whose family has completely fallen apart and who nobody watches. Jean-Roger has made a game of grinding down their teacher. The friendship pulls Bruno somewhere steadily more dangerous. Jean-Claude Brisseau's film is about neglected children on the edges of a big city. Brisseau taught for years in those districts and the narrative rests on that experience. The film does not explain the violence or look for its cause; it shows only how it became normal. The narrative sets sudden scenes of fantasy among the realist passages, and those shifts are its most original feature. Bruno Cremer plays the teacher. Who it's for: Viewers who like French social realism, child-centred drama, and European cinema of the 1980s. Who it's not for: The subject is heavy and the ending is harsh. What the child actors carry in some scenes may also be uncomfortable.