After a series of rather stale adult dramas (Rodin, The Three-Way Wedding, the racy but silly Love Battles), it’s nice to see veteran French filmmaker Jacques Doillon returning to the terroir of some of his best work with CE2 (Third Grade), a touching chronicle of troubled youth that employs child actors to explore questions of class, abuse, harassment and friendship.
The Doillon movie that most comes to mind here is Ponette (1996), which also starred a group of children, although this latest effort is rougher around the edges, with an endearing bully at its center who recalls the teen rebels of films like the director’s 1990 drama The Little Gangster and this 1974 breakthrough Touched in the Head. Small in stature and scope, CE2 won’t make major waves outside of festivals and French-speaking territories, though it reps an admirable addition to the 77-year-old auteur’s canon.
Shot with a cast of 8- and 9-year-olds, the film displays Doillon’s talent for coaxing stellar performances out of kids who’ve never been in front of a camera before and who come across entirely naturally, as if they were being captured in a fly-on-the-wall documentary. And yet CE2 is very much a scripted narrative, following two provincial third graders from opposing backgrounds — the petite bourgeoise Claire (Roxane Barazzuo) and the working-class Kevin (Cyril Sader) — who develop a delicate love-hate relationship over the course of the story.
The opening sections, reminiscent of the recent Cannes discovery Playground, show Kevin subjecting Claire to various forms of bullying in the schoolyard during recess, forcing the girl’s mother, Constance (French comic Nora Hamzawi), to take action. Doillon gives the moments of abuse a raw, unsettling energy — these kids are really slapping each other around, and it’s not always easy to watch — and we tend to experience events from a third grader’s point of view, which is one of supreme innocence and fear.
Constance’s attempts to quell her daughter’s abuser lead us to discover Kevin’s difficult home life, where he shifts between an alcoholic mom (Douilly Millet) and an unstable, probably alcoholic dad (Alexis Manenti). It’s easy to see why Kevin behaves the way he does (we learn he may have been sexually molested when he was younger) and the film reveals how difficult it is for both kids and parents to navigate worlds where bad behavior is understandable if never excusable.
If the first half of CE2 focuses more on Claire coping with the constant bullying, the second sticks with Kevin as he moves back and forth between parents who don’t want him around or are otherwise unable to stay sober enough to care for him. Manenti, who played the corrupt cop in Les Misérables, is both affecting and unsettling as a father who, despite some very poor decisions, seems to want the best for his son, and the scenes where we see him trying and failing to be a proper dad can be quietly devastating.
Doillon is strongest when showcasing characters who can exhibit awful behavior but are capable of goodness, or at least flashes of humaneness, and we see this in the bond that Kevin forms with Claire as they go from being abuser and victim to something like loving friends. While the girl opens Kevin up to a world of warmth and acceptance, he helps her overcome fears that are not only related to his bullying, but to the fact her father (Julien Tiphaine) is a career army officer stationed far from home, leaving her alone with her mother for months on end.
Even if a lasting relationship develops out of the initial animosity between the two kids, Kevin’s predicament remains unclear, and it’s to Doillon’s credit that he makes us sympathize with the boy but never gives us a false sense of hope about his situation, leaving many questions unanswered by the closing credits. In that sense, CE2 is a true coming-of-age movie — a very young age because these are third graders, not teens — about characters caught in the swirl of growing up, where much is learned and much more lies ahead.
Shot under Covid conditions (the teachers are all wearing masks), the film suffers a bit from its constrained circumstances, and at 107 minutes it stalls a little in its opening sections. But it gradually builds towards a satisfyingly uncertain ending that’s at once promising and bleak — a tone that has defined much of Doillon’s best work in the past.
Director, screenplay: Jacques Doillon
Cast: Cyril Sader, Roxane Barazzuo, Nora Hamzawi, Alexis Manenti, Douilly Millet, Madeline Knoll, Antoine Cholet
Producer: Bruno Pésery
Cinematography: Pierre Cottereau
Production design: Henriette Desjonquères
Costume design: Marine Galliano
Editing: Camille Delprat
Music: Gabriel Yard
Sound: Julien Sicart
Production companies: Arena Films (France)
World sales: Kinology
Venue: Rotterdam International Film Festival (Big Screen Competition)
In French
107 minutes
