School's Out
Reviews
SWITCH.
There is something so captivating about ‘School’s Out’, and it’s hard to put your finger on. Is it the impending sense of doom? Is it the nostalgia? Is it just wanting to know exactly what these kids are up to? Or are we even allowed to know? As adults, maybe we are just too far gone. If you like being slightly uncomfortable for an entire film, ‘School’s Out’ is for you - but maybe leave the kids at home. - Brent Davidson Read Brent's full article... https://www.maketheswitch.com.au/article/review-schools-out-the-children-know-too-much Head to https://www.maketheswitch.com.au/sff for more Sydney Film Festival reviews.
Stephen Campbell
**_Too ambiguous for its own good_** > _There is alarming evidence that important tipping points, leading to irreversible changes in major ecosystems and the planetary climate system, may already have been reached or passed. Ecosystems as diverse as the Amazon rainforest and the Arctic tundra, may be approaching thresholds of dramatic change through warming and drying. Mountain glaciers are in alarming retreat and the downstream effects of reduced water supply in the driest months will have repercussions that transcend generations._ - "Climate Change"; United Nations Based on Christophe Dufossé's 2002 novel, _L'Heure de la sortie_ [lit. trans. _The Time to Exit_] had its world premiere at the 2018 Venice Film Festival where it screened in the new "Sconfini" section, a non-competition category for difficult-to-classify films. Which should tell you a great deal. If you can imagine the ecological themes of films such as Jeff Nichols's _Take Shelter_ (2011) or Paul Schrader's _First Reformed_ (2017), filtered through the _milieu_ of Peter Weir's _Dead Poets Society_ (1989), but with the tonal qualities of Wolf Rilla's _Village of the Damned_ (1960) or Fritz Kiersch's _Children of the Corn_ (1984), then you'd be some way towards nailing director and co-writer Sébastien Marnier's second feature. Is it a satire about liberal Generation Z snowflakes overdramatically reading apocalyptic omens into trivial matters? Is it an allegory about how difficult it can be for gifted children to fit into so-called normal society? Is it a metaphor for the generation gap, and how today's children can often be alienated from even relatively young adults? Is it about desensitisation amongst a generation who have never known life without the internet or a world without post-9/11 paranoia? Is it a desperate call-to-arms, a plea on behalf of tomorrow's adults that humanity is rapidly reaching the point-of-no-return in terms of the damage we are doing to the Earth? Is it a horror movie about creepy kids doing creepy things? Is it all of these? The film opens in the prestigious St. Joseph's in France, a private middle school with an excellent reputation. On an unusually warm day, as a class of _troisième_ students (children aged 13-14) are quietly sitting a test, their teacher, Professor Eric Capadis (Cyrille Hertel), casually walks to the window, opens it, and throws himself to his death. Most of the students are shocked, but six remain relatively unfazed. Several days later, Pierre Hoffman (Laurent Lafitte) arrives at St. Joseph's as a temporary substitute for Capadis. Still writing his own PhD thesis, Pierre believes the job will be straightforward, even though the class is for intellectually advanced students. Almost immediately, however, he learns they are far ahead of where he thought they would be. Seeing how deeply unpopular a central clique of six especially gifted students (the same six who weren't especially bothered by Capadis's death) are amongst the school's other pupils (and many of the teachers), Pierre tries to ingratiate himself with them, but gets nowhere. Meanwhile, he begins to notice odd behaviour, such as when one of the students arrives for school with facial injuries, but no-one seems to care. With his curiosity getting the better of him, he starts following them, learning that they head to an abandoned quarry every day after school, where they have hidden a collection of DVDs. Upon viewing the discs, Pierre finds they contain endless hours of footage of industrial animal slaughter and food processing intercut with images of nuclear conflagrations, flashes of apocalyptic biblical imagery, and dire warnings about the unsustainable future of humanity. Unnerved by his find, he soon comes to believe the clique are watching him. Are they responsible for the mysterious late-night phone calls he has been getting? Do they have anything to do with his tap water turning brown? Or his electricity turning on and off? Or his missing laptop? What about the cockroaches that invade his apartment? Could the clique even have been involved with Capadis's suicide? But to what end? What are they planning, and why? I ended both of the above paragraphs with a series of questions for a reason. Namely, to emphasise that if you're looking for definitive answers here, you won't get them. Virtually none of the mysteries the film throws up, of which there are a hell of a lot, are conclusively resolved. The film is happy for you to peer inside, but Marnier steadfastly refuses to give you much info to contextualise what you're looking at. Speaking to Cineuropa, Marnier explains that the film begins as if to present > _the opacity of adolescence through the eyes of a 40-year-old man_ [...] _I was interested in placing viewers inside Pierre's head and body, as if to hypnotise, contaminate and poison them._ However, as Pierre gets more and more unnerved by the clique, the film slowly changes course; according to Marnier, this is > _the point at which the classic confrontation forks off towards a point of rupture._ The nature of this rupture, however, is never really clarified, as Marnier is far more interested in asking questions than answering them. There are certainly clues about what it all means, and the audience is pushed in certain directions from time to time, but even the final scene, although it does suggest some answers, also raises more questions. In theory, I don't have a problem with this kind of narrative. Films built around ambiguity, where certain details are withheld, and everything is left up to subjective interpretation, can work extremely well (after all, one of my all time favourite films is Terrence Malick's _The Tree of Life_). However, the mysteries of _L'Heure de la sortie_ are very different to those found in Malick, or, say, David Lynch's _Lost Highway_ (1997), _Mulholland Dr._ (2001), _Inland Empire_ (2006), or _Twin Peaks: The Return_ (2017). Whilst Lynch's films tend to function as sensory puzzles, where the audience must bend their interpretation around what is on screen, with every little aural and visual detail meaning something (and often more than one thing) in relation to the whole, _L'Heure de la sortie_ is more of an intellectual conundrum, asking question after question without time to pause, and then stepping back and asking, finally, "_so what do you think I was trying to say there_?" Speaking of one possible interpretation of the film, (namely, the ecological one – that this generation is gifting to the next a planet we have largely destroyed, something about which we're not overly bothered), Marnier states, > _we are aware but we're not fighting anymore – not just because we feel let down by politicians. I think the world has become so scary that we take refuge in our little lives, trying to make them as pleasant as possible._ The clique act as if they have no hope for the future, and that they firmly believe the world left for them (their "_era_" as they call it) will throw up problems the likes of which humanity will be unable to overcome. Of this meaning, Marnier explains, > _the film states that we are still waiting for the disaster to happen so that "living together" and collective awareness can take shape again. But we need to work together before it's too late._ The clique don't share this optimism, believing too much damage has already been done. In fact, they believe that optimism itself is part of the problem; as one points out, "_it's too late, there's no future. You don't want to face the truth_." As this might suggest, the film tackles political and social themes infinitely more weighty than those typically found in Lynch (who tends to focus on psychological issues), but as an artistic statement, I found it lacking. And whereas the absence of any obvious directorial or authorial "statement" in Lynch's work is actually part of what makes it so successful, here, due to the various political themes raised, the question of "_what is the director trying to say_" remains front-and-centre the entire time. I rarely ask myself that question when watching a Lynch film, or a Malick film, or a Guy Maddin film; I might ask it afterwards, but during the experiential moment, the artistry becomes its own referent. During _L'Heure de la sortie_, I was constantly wondering to myself, "_what does Marnier mean by that_?", something I don't even do when viewing the work of a politically allegorical filmmaker such as Peter Greenaway. The narrative jumps from unanswered question to half-answered question to unexplained scene to unclear theme back to unanswered question, throwing so much gasoline on the fire that it burns itself out. By roughly the half-way point, I had stopped caring why Capadis had killed himself, because there were about fifteen other unanswered questions rattling about. And it's a case of ever diminishing returns – the more mysteries that go unaddressed, the less important each of them feels. But it's not just that there are too many mysteries. Again, this can work well in the right hands. Rather, it's that few of them ever connect to the others. Take, for example, the hobo scene in _Mulholland Dr._ For much of the runtime, it seems completely divorced from everything else in the film. But we do eventually learn how it relates to the main plot, even if it remains ambiguous. _L'Heure de la sortie_ is full of what feels like completely disconnected mysteries. There's also little to reward the patient or observant viewer. Contrast it with films such as _Lost Highway_, when we recognise the police sirens at the end are the same ones that Fred (Bill Pullman) heard in the opening scene, or _Mulholland Dr._, when the Cowboy (Monty Montgomery) explains to Adam (Justin Theroux) what it will mean if he sees him "_two more times_", and right at the end, we see him for the second time. There's nothing like that in _L'Heure de la sortie_, with so much feeling like it exists in isolation from everything else. Which is not to say there is nothing to like about the film. The 1980s-style retro score, by John Carpenter aficionados Zombie Zombie, is excellent, and Romain Carcanade's cinematography is superb, using anamorphic lenses to distort interiors in tandem with Pierre's crumpling mental state, and really hammering home how monumentally hot it's supposed to be, using a recurring visual motif of beads of sweat. Additionally, there are some wonderful touches in the screenplay, co-written by Marnier and Elise Griffon. For example, Pierre is writing a thesis on Franz Kafka and his apartment is invaded by cockroaches. There are also individual scenes of great brilliance. For all its unsettling weirdness and creepy kids, for me, the most disturbing scene was one based entirely in reality. When an alarm sounds in the school, Pierre asks if it's a fire drill, and the class all but laugh at the question. Of course it isn't a fire drill – it's an active shooter drill. The students calmly gather their things and move to the wall, sitting under the windows looking into the corridor. However, when Pierre joins them, they chastise him, not once, but twice – firstly, for leaving his own things on his desk, meaning if a shooter walks by, they will look in and know someone is in there, and secondly, he forgets to turn his phone onto airplane mode. The scene is chillingly effective in it profound mundanity, not only showing us their accustomed and dispassionate response, but in hammering home the very different lives that people of Pierre's age led when they were in school. Obviously, this speaks to the generation divide, but it also speaks to issues of desensitisation; the state of the world has sufficiently traumatised these children to the point where something like this is routine; the possibility that a shooter might wander into a school and start killing people is not something any child (in any country) should live with. In fact, if you read the scene allegorically, it actually suggests that not only did older generations grow up in a different environment, should the worst happen, they are relatively powerless to protect the next generation, and may even end up getting them killed. That's essentially the polar opposite of what an adult is supposed to bring to a young person's life. All in all though, despite these elements, the film left me disappointed. It builds up very nicely in the early stages, but about mid-way through the second act, it flounders, as you start to realise it's not actually building to anything specific. Even the _dénouement_ is insipid (although the short coda that ends the film is excellent; evocative and properly creepy). The characterisation is also poor, with only Pierre given any kind of arc, whilst the children themselves remain empty avatars, devoid of psychological verisimilitude. I'm also not entirely convinced that if you want to prod people into action _vis-à-vis_ climate change, the best way to go about it is by presenting a mystery-thriller that has no intentions of explaining what is going on – the vehicle just doesn't correlate with the message. It's worth a look, but given the scope of the themes and the nature of the central message, you would hope for a lot more.
Movie Recommendation
L'anima in pace2024-01-18Dora is a 25-year-old girl with an apparently rough and impenetrable character who works by bringing shopping home, a very heavy job. This is not the only difficulty in her life though, as she comes from a broken family.More...
A Song Called Hate2021-06-17The pro-Palestinian, anti-capitalist, BDSM-provocative, techno-punk performance art ensemble Hatari unsurprisingly drew attention to themselves with their performance at the Icelandic qualifiers for the Eurovision Song Contest. So much so that they won and therefore were allowed to perform at the main event in Tel Aviv. But what now? Should they boycott the event, swallow their idealism, or use their airtime to criticise the host country for their illegal occupation of Palestine? The Icelandic director Anna Hildur joins the boys in the band all the way to the fateful final.More...
Apocalypse Now Now2017-08-29Snarky, monster-porn-dealing teen, Baxter Zevcenko, might be a serial killer. His girlfriend, Esme, is missing, and he’s the prime suspect. To clear his name, he’ll turn to Cape Town’s grizzliest, drunkest bounty hunter, Jackson ‘Jackie’ Ronin. Little does he know that Ronin is a supernatural bounty-hunter, and that he’s about to be dragged headlong into a deep, dark Cape Town underbelly full of monsters and myth, shadowy government forces, bloodthirsty crow-men and a conspiracy across time and space.More...
Whatever Happened to My Revolution2019-02-06Angela was 8 years old when the first McDonald's opened in East Berlin - Since then, she has been fighting against the curse of her generation: to be born "too late" at a time of global political depression. Coming from a family of activists, her sister chose the world of business and her mother abandoned overnight her political struggle to move alone to the countryside.More...
Little Woods2019-04-19For years, Ollie has illicitly helped the struggling residents of her North Dakota oil boomtown access Canadian health care and medication. When the authorities catch on, she plans to abandon her crusade, only to be dragged in even deeper after a desperate plea for help from her sister.More...
The Invisibles2019-01-09Following a city councils decision, a women's shelter will soon be closed and social workers have only three months to accommodate the residents.More...
Breath of Life2018-12-03Simon is an experienced doctor who rubs shoulders with death on a daily basis as part of his job in an intensive care unit. Like any good professional, he has learnt to shield himself from it. But when his mother is hospitalised in a nearby unit, and is in a critical condition, his private life and professional life clash spectacularly. Simon’s whole world, and all his certainties and beliefs, are shaken to the core – even to the extent of re-evaluating his career...More...
Digging for Fire2015-08-21Tim and Lee are married with a young child. The chance to stay at a fancy home in the Hollywood Hills is complicated by Tim's discovery of a bone and a rusty old gun in the yard. Tim is excited by the idea of a mystery, but Lee doesn't want him to dig any further, preferring that he focus on the family taxes, which he promised to do weeks ago. This disagreement sends them on separate and unexpected adventures over the course of a weekend, as Tim and his friends seek clues to the mystery while Lee searches for answers to the bigger questions of marriage and parenthood.More...
Chacun pour tous2018-10-31In order to participate with medal options in the Sydney 2000 Paralympic Games, the national coach of France decides to form a basketball team composed mostly of fake mentally disability. Once in Australia, the fraudsters must fake their disability by living with the other athletes in the Olympic village or by attending the media in the post-match press conference.More...
One Nation, One King2018-09-26„Un peuple et son roi" crosses the destinies of the men and women of the population, and those of historical figures. Their meeting place is the newly founded National Assembly. At the heart of the story lie the fate of the king and the birth of the French Republic.More...
Freedomland2006-02-17A black police detective must solve a strange case of a kidnapped boy and deal with a big racial protest.More...
K.O.2017-06-21A CEO for a television channel finds his life torn apart after he wakes up from coma.More...
Domino2019-05-31Seeking justice for his partner’s murder by an ISIS member, a Copenhagen police officer finds himself caught in a cat and mouse game with a duplicitous CIA agent who is using the killer as a pawn to trap other ISIS members.More...
God Exists, Her Name Is Petrunya2019-05-01In Stip, a small town in Macedonia, every January the local priest throws a wooden cross into the river and hundreds of men dive after it. Good fortune and prosperity are guaranteed to the man who retrieves it. This time, Petrunya dives into the water on a whim and manages to grab the cross before the others. Her competitors are furious - how dare a woman take part in their ritual? All hell breaks loose, but Petrunya holds her ground. She won her cross and will not give it up.More...
Cyrano, My Love2018-11-10Paris, France, December 1897. The young playwright Edmond Rostand feels like a failure. Inspiration has abandoned him. Married and father of two children, desperate and penniless, he persuades the great actor Constant Coquelin to perform the main role in his new play. But there is a problem: Coquelin wants to premiere it at Christmas and Edmond has not written a single word.More...
Long Day's Journey into Night2018-12-31Luo Hongwu returns to Kaili, the hometown from which he fled many years ago. He begins the search for the woman he loved and whom he has never been able to forget.More...
Nirvana1997-01-24Jimi, a computer game designer, finds that his latest product has been infected by a virus which has given consciousness to the main character of the game, Solo. Tormented by the memory of his fled girlfriend Lisa and begged by Solo to end its useless "life", Jimi begins a search for people who can help him both to discover what happened to Lisa and to delete his game before it is released.More...
After Love2021-06-04Set in the port town of Dover in the South-East of England, Mary Hussain suddenly finds herself a widow following the unexpected death of her husband. A day after the burial, she discovers he has a secret just twenty-one miles across the English Channel in Calais.More...
Si vive una volta sola2021-04-28Umberto, Lucia and Corrado discover that their co-worker and friend Umberto is terminally ill, but they can't bring themselves to tell him. They decide instead to organize him an unforgettable holiday trip to the South.More...
Four Flies on Grey Velvet1971-12-17Roberto, a drummer in a rock band, keeps receiving weird phone calls and being followed by a mysterious man. One night he manages to catch up with his persecutor and tries to get him to talk but in the ensuing struggle he accidentally stabs him. He runs away, but he understands his troubles have just begun when the following day he receives an envelope with photos of him killing the man. Someone is killing all his friends and trying to frame him for the murders.More...
Similar Movies
Shooter
2007-03-22A top Marine sniper, Bob Lee Swagger, leaves the military after a mission goes horribly awry and disappears, living in seclusion. He is coaxed back into service after a high-profile government official convinces him to help thwart a plot to kill the President of the United States. Ultimately double-crossed and framed for the attempt, Swagger becomes the target of a nationwide manhunt. He goes on the run to track the real killer and find out who exactly set him up, and why, eventually seeking revenge against some of the most powerful and corrupt leaders in the free world.Earth
1998-09-16It's 1947 and the borderlines between India and Pakistan are being drawn. A young girl bears witnesses to tragedy as her ayah is caught between the love of two men and the rising tide of political and religious violence.Running with Scissors...
2006-10-27Young Augusten Burroughs absorbs experiences that could make for a shocking memoir: the son of an alcoholic father and an unstable mother, he's handed off to his mother's therapist, Dr. Finch, and spends his adolescent years as a member of Finch's bizarre extended family.The Wave
2008-03-13A school teacher discusses types of government with his class. His students find it too boring to repeatedly go over national socialism and believe that dictatorship cannot be established in modern Germany. He starts an experiment to show how easily the masses can become manipulated.Youth Without Youth
2007-10-26Professor of language and philosophy Dominic Matei is struck by lightning and ages backwards from 70 to 40 in a week, attracting the world and the Nazis. While on the run, the professor meets a young woman who has her own experience with a lightning storm. Not only does Dominic find love again, but her new abilities hold the key to his research.The Lovely Bones
2009-12-26After being brutally murdered, 14-year-old Susie Salmon watches from heaven over her grief-stricken family -- and her killer. As she observes their daily lives, she must balance her thirst for revenge with her desire for her family to heal.Haruta & Chika
2017-03-04Haruta is handsome and smart, Chika is bright and naive. When they were children, they were friends until Haruta's family moved away while he was in the 3rd grade. They meet again during a high school entrance ceremony. After all of these years, Chika is eager to join the wind instrument club. Due to an incident, the wind instrument club is about to be disbanded. Chika can't give up the flute so she attracts Haruta to her side and tries to recruit members from the wind instrument club. The group attempts to solve various cases taking place at their school while they plan to take part in a contest.Summer 1993
2017-03-24After her mother's death, six-year-old Frida is sent to her uncle's family to live with them in the countryside. But Frida finds it hard to forget her mother and adapt to her new life.The King's Avatar: Fo...
2019-08-16In this prequel to the animated series The King's Avatar, Ye Xiu enters into the pro gaming world of Glory, and competes in the first Pro League series tournament.The Dimension Travele...
1998-12-26A teenage girl makes a new friend at her school who tells her that she has the ability to travel between worlds.Spring Night
2025-07-09Middle-aged Yeong-gyeong and Su-hwan meet at the wedding party of a common friend. She passes out drunk, and he carries her home on his back. Soon this becomes a daily ritual, as the two broken beings – one’s spirit consumed by alcohol and the other’s body sapped by arthritis – begin to find strength and solace in each other. Their gentle, platonic bond – outside society, outside history – offers a chance at salvation, but is severely stressed by Yeong-gyeong’s repeated relapses.The Rage: Carrie 2
1999-03-12Following the suicide of her only friend, outcast teen Rachel Lang's life begins a downward spiral that will not only affect her but take everyone around her down in horrifying fashion.Carrie
2002-11-04An awkward, telekinetic teenage girl's lonely life is dominated by relentless bullying at school and an oppressive religious fanatic mother at home. When her tormentors pull a humiliating prank at the senior prom, she unleashes a horrifying chaos on everyone, leaving nothing but destruction in her wake.There Will Be Blood
2007-12-26Ruthless silver miner, turned oil prospector, Daniel Plainview, moves to oil-rich California. Using his son to project a trustworthy, family-man image, Plainview cons local landowners into selling him their valuable properties for a pittance. However, local preacher Eli Sunday suspects Plainview's motives and intentions, starting a slow-burning feud that threatens both their lives.Sahara
2005-04-06Seasoned adventurer and treasure hunter Dirk Pitt, a former Navy SEAL, sets out for the African desert with his wisecracking buddy Al in search of a confederate ironclad battleship rumored to have vanished long ago, the main draw being the treasure supposedly hidden within the lost vessel. When the daring duo come across Dr. Eva Rojas, a beautiful scientist who is juggling an escape from a warlord and a mission to stop the spread of a powerful plague, their desert expedition begins to heat up.After We Collided
2020-09-02Tessa finds herself struggling with her complicated relationship with Hardin; she faces a dilemma that could change their lives forever.Gorky Park
1983-12-15Police Inspector Renko tries to solve the case of three bodies found in Moscow's Gorky Park but finds his attempts to solve the crime impeded by his superiors. Working on his own, Renko seeks out more information and stumbles across a conspiracy involving the highest levels of the government.Howards End
1992-03-13A saga of class relations and changing times in an Edwardian England on the brink of modernity, the film centers on liberal Margaret Schlegel, who, along with her sister Helen, becomes involved with two couples: wealthy, conservative industrialist Henry Wilcox and his wife Ruth, and the downwardly mobile working-class Leonard Bast and his mistress Jackie.Holes
2003-04-18A wrongfully convicted boy is sent to a brutal desert detention camp where he must dig holes in order to build character. What he doesn't know is that he is digging holes in order to search for a lost treasure hidden somewhere in the camp.Blindness
2008-05-14When a sudden plague of blindness devastates a city, a small group of the afflicted band together to triumphantly overcome the horrific conditions of their imposed quarantine.