Kinder

In 16-mm black and white, as sober as it is beautiful, Kinder links up two homes. One of which is a “children’s home”. There, ten-year-old Tommy and Marvin discuss the use of a M16 compared to a shotgun; a blond seven-year-old moves in his bed as if miming a porn film. From the first shots, the sparkling joy of their shouts in the forest contradicts any preconception of the “Home” as a closed institution. The other home is the house where later we’ll find Marvin, who has returned to live with his mother and sister. Here, on the contrary, all seems oppressive, with the hemmed-in yard where the son’s tantrums are strapped down by the arms of his corpulent mother. Clearly, a traumatic event happened here. In its structure, the film assigns an appropriate place to this serious event. It has not stopped the children playing but, as we come to understand, it has poisoned their games, which we now see in a different light. The title–Children–comes to mean a tender age that should have been spared. The cowboy gunfire of Marvin and his sister are an all too meagre response to a memory that has not disappeared–the salt in the wound. Attentive, the filmmaker captures images that are metaphors for the trauma’s invisible images. But she also shows Marvin dripping with sweat as he builds a shelter in the shade, a den where he can think. Kinder, or the story of two homes and one nest.

Charlotte Garson