At its outset, you could be forgiven for thinking that Michèle Jacob’s The Lost Children is going to be a tale of interpersonal strife amongst a group of kids when left to their own devices.
Or a fairytale story about four siblings discovering some enchanted land through a wardrobe in their sprawling, tumbledown home. Both of these elements are present, but they are in service to a far darker drama about the potential traumas of childhood and the long-lasting effects that they can have on the psyche. Playing in the Proxima competition at Karlovy Vary, the festival’s recently established home for bolder more experimental work, this is a film operating in several registers and manages to balance them all; switching from heart-thumping to tear-jerking with aplomb.
When Audrey (Iris Mirzabekaintz) and her siblings awake one summer’s morning to find that their father has disappeared, the news is treated matter-of-factly, with a roll of the eyes and a shrug of the shoulders. The morning sun illuminates the leaves and the ramshackle old redbrick house, in which the siblings find themselves, feels idyllic as they bicker and play. However, it soon becomes evident that something strange is afoot and their children’s games are interrupted by strange goings-on witnessed, initially, by Audrey. First, she hears a little girl’s voice in the wall while sequestered during a game of hide-and-seek and then when she’s forced to stand alone in the dark yard for a dare, glowing eyes appear on the edge of the forest and pounding footsteps begin to encroach.
The unease created by Jacob is neatly deployed, being drip-fed into a world that otherwise could feel bucolic. The children all have their own odd experiences that chime with Audrey’s but which they also keep to themselves. The oldest sister, Alex (Liocha Mirzabekiantz) starts finding bruises on her skin, appearing like marks of some unknown abuse. Gilles (Louis Litt Magis) becomes keenly aware that there is no way to leave the house – he goes on daily expeditions into the forest, trying to plot a course, but all roads lead back to their front door. Yannick (Lohen van Houtte) who is Alex’s twin, begins to scribble disturbing pictures of the things Audrey has seen.
With nobody but Audrey openly admitting the weirdness of their situation, the group retains a sense of innocence with Alex playing mother and the four of them hunkering down together in a homemade fort. It’s a deft way to handle the growing threat of the menace lurking in the dark, never allowing the film to tip fully into its horror elements to the detriment of its characters. As such, the film feels like a scary story for kids, in which a group of children is inexplicably left alone to fend off a nightmarish evil – the subsequent revelation that the monster is afraid of the light only serves to emphasise this.
Even more impressive than how Jacob and her collaborators handle the foreboding atmosphere is how the film shifts register when necessary. Across its runtime, it transforms from a dreamy childhood coming-of-ager to a creepy haunted house film. With apparently no effort at all, it can switch from a terrifying sequence involving hulking monsters to a poignant one in which four young siblings come together to offer one another comfort. Nastasia Saerens’ photography and Andréas Moulin’s music help tremendously, the former often finding the perfect balance between dissonant composition and woozy sun-kissed visuals, and the latter expertly applying a discordant hum that unpicks an otherwise tranquil image. In such hands, it means that the clues littered throughout that suggest the film’s ultimate destination are more than enough to allow its last-act narrative switch to feel natural and completely earned.
This is also in no small part due to the performances of the four children, who display wisdom and perception beyond their years in their depictions of characters a little more nuanced than may be expected from the plot synopsis. That each of them feels so real, and that they all implied some implied levels of struggle or suffering, makes the film’s revelations about their situation ever more heart-rending to watch and forges their relationship into something deeply affecting as they decide to confront the monster that plagues them and perhaps always has.
Director, screenplay: Michèle Jacob
Cast: Iris Mirzabekiantz, Liocha Mirzabekiantz, Louis Litt Magis, Lohen Van Houtte
Producer: Sebastian Schelenz
Cinematography: Nastasja Saerens
Editing: Christophe Evrard
Music: Andréas Moulin
Sound: Lise Bouchez, Sebastian Van Dhelsen, Jeff Levillain
Art Director: Catherine Cosme, Michèle Jacob
VFX: Alessandro Leën
Production company: Velvet Films (Belgium)
Venue: Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Proxima)
In French
83 minutes
