Karlovy Vary Film Festival presents the first feature of Michèle Jacob, The Lost Children.
After her short film JULY 96, Belgian director Michèle Jacob presents her first feature, The Lost Children, at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival.
Somewhat inspired by the Peter Pan’s story written by James Matthew Barrie, the movie is a captivating portrayal of childhood fears, orchestrated in a mesmerizing and almost allegorical tale that delves into one particular wound: abandonment.
Jacob plays with the audience since she doesn’t perfectly fit in any specific genre, yet she touches many of them. The story of Audrey and her siblings in fact strikes as a coming of age story, a drama, a psychological thriller and sometimes a horror, which cannot be pinpointed, nor does it aim it. This is perhaps the main strength of a film; being able to keep the audience on the edge of their seats and at the same time to move them deeply. Because everyone can relate to the vulnerability that comes with youth. Something that merely gets covered up and rarely gets expressed during adulthood, thus leading to many unhappy lives.
Clearly playing along the lines of The Others (directed by Alejandro Amenàbar, 2002) the film presents four brothers and sisters, stuck in a mysteriously decadent house in the middle of a forest. Their father has just disappeared, the mother has not been in the picture for a long time and is just a fade memory, a smell, an image, a painful loss. As they try to lead a normal life under the guidance of the eldest sister, who now takes up a motherly role, a weird energy or better an eerie presence summons them from the forest and from inside the mansion itself and doesn’t seem to let them run away. As if they are destined to be there, alone and together. Alone but together.
If you stop believing in fairs, then they will cease to exist, so Audrey is told. But is it the same for ghosts? The little girl is not convinced, as the spooky figures that she now intermittently bumps into for an imperceptible fraction of time and yet enough to scare her doesn’t seem to be fragments of her imagination, but pretty real.
Soon the whole family will be involved, dragged into an investigation that keeps them closer together, as the truth slowly comes to the surface. The intermittence with what seems to be a somewhat parallel reality gets all the way more baffling, but somehow less frightening and almost, paradoxically, natural. The so-called monster that we get to meet in the end can be tamed, but only by looking at it in the eyes, only by knowing. It starts to feel almost familiar.
This introspective drama in fact stems from a real introspection into Audrey’s mind, or better the collective mind of the family that is trying to save her.
Now the girl sees herself as an adult, laying in bed and surrounded by her two brothers, grown up and with a beard, and by her beloved sister, all engaged into a surreal (as in literally above perceptive reality) rescue operation. They are now all connected through a triggered telepathy that combines their minds, they have entered their wounded sister’s inner life and they have to grab her and bring her back, when during her adulthood, she tries to take her own life. They have to snatch her from her childhood and bring her back to an adult present that could be the future, as time is a blurred circle, not a clear line.
A present-past where a family tragedy happened and a trauma – now embodied by that horrendous and yet somehow well-acquainted monster – needs to be dealt with. Perhaps they will not defeat it, but with the strength of their brotherly bond, they can tame it, transform it, or simply accept it.
The film is thus an intimate, metaphorical and heartfelt journey into the mazes of oneself, of our grief, our losses, our wounds that can become scars if treated with love, thus ceasing to bleed. It’s a celebration of resilience and unity, that juxtaposes many different layers and colors. If we look back at our past, there is always something that will haunt us, but if we are not too scared to do so, we can also remember the moments of joy, like eating berries on the grass, and laughing, or simply being together, like one.
Family is a living organism, our brain is a complicated yet marvelous one, and emotions are what make us who we are; even the negative one, even when they come in the shape of ghosts.
The Lost Children thus encompasses so many aspects of life with a personal touch, proving that Michèle Jacob, whose two daughters star in the film, is definitely a director to be looked at.
© 2020-2023. UniversalCinema Mag.