Our story takes place in Lorraine, a French region better known for its serial killers than for its tourist sites. And the facet that director Samuel Theis shows us in his second feature film, Small typewill not improve the brand image of this corner of France where he is from.
Always with an aftertaste of experience, Theis introduces us to little Johnny, 10, a smarter than average kid, forced to act like an adult in an unhealthy family environment. Facing a dead-end horizon, he dreams of nothing. The arrival of a new teacher will gradually give him a glimpse of much broader perspectives.
A poisoned environment
Hand-held camera and almost navigating documentary waters, Samuel Theis acid paints a poisoned living environment. After party girlhis first feature, which won him the Camera d’or at Cannes in 2014, the director and screenwriter is not weakening with this abrasive and powerful new film.
It begins with a very strong, disturbing, even violent scenario. Le Lorrain manhandles our little heart without restraint by chaining almost sadistic emotional lifts. Its best weapon is our imagination. Theis sows clues to let us imagine the worst, before freezing us in incomprehension and finally showing us that he could have found even worse.
But alongside the worst, there is also the best to see. Because Small type It’s not so much the caustic portrayal of a troubled family as Johnny’s apprenticeship under a teacher that fascinates him beyond measure.
The camera follows his point of view, and the realization melts in the eyes of this young hero to cast the same gaze of a disillusioned child on the world. His personal journey is filmed very gently. One feels the silken heart in front of this history of a child who sees opening in front of him a more radiant horizon.
The film thus navigates between a documentary aesthetic and a contemplative aesthetic that brilliantly intertwine melancholy, tenderness and harshness. The music, almost superfluous, is discreet to better let the images speak for themselves.
find the pearl
To carry this film on his frail shoulders, Samuel Theis flushed out a pearl. Aliocha Reinert is miraculous. He, whose first film this is, gives an incredibly poignant performance in the role of Johnny and is screamingly truthful from start to finish. If Johnny is fascinated by his teacher, the viewer is fascinated by Alyosha. The complicity of the young actor and his partner, the Caesarized Antoine Reinartz, is immediate and radiates in each scene. The interpreters have, to make their job easier, excellent dialogues that Samuel Theis has concocted for them.
The characters he wrote for them are disarmingly frank, and their replies, live ammunition shots that always hit home. The proof, you will not come out of this film intact.