A completely unexpected film surprise comes to us from the French part of Switzerland. An emotional, poignant and moving drama about girls from a home for neglected children, which is also a kind of safe house for young people in trouble, it could partly be described as the Swiss “Kids”, but that would not be entirely accurate. “La mif” i.e. “The Family” is a great problem drama in which the self-taught Swiss filmmaker Fred Baillif completes the story brilliantly and brings it to us from the perspective of all the girls who are placed in the home, and finally from the perspective of the headmistress who herself experienced a family tragedy because her daughter killed herself and it was she who returned to work after a long illness.
And she is immediately met with problems because one of the social workers caught the rebellious 17-year-old Audrey having sex during the night, from whose perspective we initially follow the story, with a 14-year-old kid. The police were immediately called, there is a danger that the home will be closed and that it will lose donations, and while waiting for the final decision, the home has been turned into an institution where only girls and women will be housed. And as we move from one story to another told from the perspective of some of these girls, a mosaic is slowly created and we learn why they ended up there in the first place. Narratively, it is executed brilliantly because it seems somewhat elliptical and we follow certain situations on several occasions, but presented from various perspectives.
It all seems incredibly authentic, at times almost like one of those observational documentaries in which the director does not seem to interfere in the story, but just follows the development of events. This naturalistic impression is of course also influenced by the hand-held camera with which the film was shot, and although I assume that all those girls who embodied the girls from the home are unprofessional because it is their first acting experience, they all seem so convincing, authentic, real. When we understand what was happening in their lives, it is immediately clearer to us why they are so unhappy, wild, angry, bitter, sensitive and rebellious. Why do they provoke and challenge everyone around them, spite and create problems even though they are usually aware that what they are doing is not good.
And the name of the film was not chosen by chance, because we will understand that these girls are really each other’s only family, and we also see that it is not an easy or pleasant job for all these social workers. They must be close to the beneficiaries, as a kind of substitute for a real family, but not too close, and try to prepare them for the life that awaits them when they turn 18 and have to become independent. At the same time, it is a problematic film because “La mif” shows that the system often does not listen at all to what is happening and problems are usually solved in a bureaucratic way, rigidly and strictly, without considering and investing in merit.
How to help such young people, who are each damaged and traumatized in their own way because of everything they have lived through and the often tragic and shocking fates they have had, is the question of all questions. We also see how employees often have to ask themselves if everything they do is in vain and if their efforts had any meaning and effect, because quite often the opposite of what should happen happens. It was an extremely complex, deeply thought-out and high-quality film that was also a Swiss candidate for the Oscar, while it won the award for the best film for young people at the Berlin festival.