Zappa

A Danish film set in Copenhagen. The year is 1961. Bjørn is twelve and new at the school. His family is about to break up. His parents fight constantly. He becomes friends with two boys in his class. Steen is the son of a rich family. The house is empty, the parents absent, and the boy has money. Mulle is the third. Quiet, kind, and unable to fight. From there the film is a story about three boys. School, the street, an aquarium, a swimming pool. Steen takes the lead. Small thefts first, then larger ones. Bjørn admires him. His fearlessness looks like power. Then Steen turns on Mulle. The violence starts. Like a joke at first, then regularly. Bjørn has to choose. He will either object or join in. He joins in. What the narrative is interested in is not friendship but fear: its idea is that the boy stands beside the bully not out of admiration but out of a wish not to be the target. Steen's own home is shown too. The narrative gives him not as a monster but as a child who has also been abandoned, and does not offer it as an excuse. Bjørn's family falls apart in the background. The two lines are never joined, and that is exactly why it works. An aquarium scene is the turning point and is entirely silent. The ending offers no resolution. The source is Bjarne Reuter's novel; he wrote the screenplay as well. This is Bille August's first major film and he worked with the same writer on later ones. Adam Tønsberg, Morten Hoff and Peter Reichhardt are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes Scandinavian films about childhood and stories of bullying. Who it is not for: anyone wanting an easy watch; the violence is between children and the narrative softens it nowhere.