It was Wei who sent out the call for people to go along and watch this on Friday night, and although I got held up at work a bit (I didn't get out of the office till about 6.30), I decided to head down to St Kilda and catch it on spec despite not knowing anything at all about the film. Met Wei, Gary, David and a friend of Wei's (John?) outside just before 7, and on the way in was pulled up by Pia and Nenad (plus friend) who were there independently and told me that it had won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, which whetted my appetite. The crucial bit of information which I lacked until afterwards, though (in fact, until today [Saturday], when Ruth told me), was that the people behind it - the Dardenne brothers - had also been responsible for Rosetta, which is possibly the least enjoyable film that I've ever seen; if I'd known that beforehand, there's no way I would have gone along to see this one.
Anyhow, I did watch it, evidently, and I realised fairly early on that it was going to be a lot too social realist for me; it only took about 15 minutes for me to start thinking along those lines, and to begin hoping that it would turn out more Dreamlife of Angels than Rosetta. I thought that it was well done, for what it was - neatly structured and effectively shot (with some cinematic moments - like the replaying of the apartment door scene with Bruno taking Sonia's place about two-thirds of the way through - which didn't distract from the tenor of the whole), and the actors do the job - but the truth of the matter is that this whole genre is more or less a no-go zone for me (I loved The Dreamlife of Angels when I saw it, back in high school or shortly after, but have felt very little desire to watch it again any time since, and besides, in my recollections at least, it had more of a luminescence to it than this one allows itself) and, while I admire the idea and the spirit of The Child in the abstract, actually getting through the film was a bit of a slog.
