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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Grasping for Reality in a Child's Mind Fraught with Delusional Thinking, August 4, 2005
This review is from: Class Trip (DVD)
La Classe de neige (CLASS TRIP) is terrifying little film that sweeps the viewer into a world so altered by a child's viewpoint that finding the story is a detective game - and a fine one at that! Director Claude Miller adapted Emmanuel Carrère's novella by the same name and out of this tale of 'everyday macabre' he has created a horror film that stands along with 'Diabolique' as pinnacles of French cinema.
Nicolas (Clément van den Bergh) is young, enuretic son of overbearing parents (Father François Roy and mother Tina Sportolaro) who is denied the companionship of his classmates on a bus trip to a ski resort by the father's insistence on driving him in his car. Nicolas is a loner, a child who has many phobias, and who (we learn) has been exposed to many 'strange' situations. His father is a traveling saleman of prostheses, samples of which he keeps in his trunk. This arrogant father has at times been abusive, and at time coldly hostile, but he is the only person with whom Nicolas can relate.
Once at camp Nicolas discovers his father departed before unloading Nicolas' suitcase. The kindly school teachers Miss Grimm (think of the fairy tales!) Emmanuelle Bercot and Patrick (Yves Verhoeven) help Nicolas adjust and the class ruffian Hodkann (Lokman Nalcakan) not only loans him pajamas but befriends Nicolas in other ways. Nicolas confides to Hodkann his father's strange occupation and soon the two exchange many stories that intertwine. When a child near the ski resort is found dead, rumors abound about bizarre men who kidnap young children in order to remove their organs for the transplant black market. Nicolas has nightmares which include invaders to the class trip, memories of his father, prostheses becoming body parts, etc and one night as he tries to correct the results of his bedwetting, he gazes out the window at the first snow, walks into the snow locking himself out, and is discovered the next day in Patrick's car (yet another source of future nightmares).
Nicolas and Hodkann bond and attempt to solve the mystery of the dead child and this adventure leads to some terrifying events - and we never know which of the tales is true and which is the product of Nicolas' fragile, twisted mind. Suffice it to say that the ending is disturbing and leaves the viewer with the fear to turn out the lights!
The cast is superb, the musical score as composed by Henri Texier with a lot of help from movements from the Rossini 'Petite Messe Solennelle', and the cinematography by Guillaume Schiffman is extraordinary, moving smoothly and frighteningly between imagined incidents and reality. This is a fine study of the fragile and fractured mind of a child and the elements that are both the etiology and the sequelae to delusional thinking. Highly Recommended. Grady Harp, August 05
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17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Alpine Suspense, April 28, 2004
This review is from: Class Trip (DVD)
"Class Trip" ("La classe de neige") is a psychological thriller about fourteen-year old Nicolas (very well played by Clement van den Bergh), sent to a school in the French Alps. Although his teachers are supportive, Nicolas is withdrawn. He gradually develops a friendship with fellow student Hodkann (played by Lokman Nalcakan). Nicolas seems consumed with shocking memories, or are they wild fantasies? Artificial limbs, children abducted for organ harvesting, paramilitary attacks on the school, freezing to death in a car, his own funeral, missing children, hostile fathers, and monkey paws granting wishes all make appearances. Nicolas quietly tells Hodkann and some others parts of the story. What is true and what is not? What to do about it? The suspense builds quite masterfully to a satisfying conclusion. While this film seems to be marketed as a gay film, it is really a thriller. Nicolas may have a mild crush on Hodkann, but it doesn't go further than that. The two skin scenes are not gratuitous and are tasteful. The acting (especially by van den Bergh), the interesting screenplay, and the fine cinematography all make this a suspenseful psychological thriller.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Compelling cinema ..., January 11, 2012
This review is from: Class Trip (DVD)
The confusion this film seems to have brought about in some of the reviewers here becomes less so on second viewing, I found, which makes me think that it could be followed easily enough the first time if one was looking in the right way ... It takes a while to get used to the mixture of dream, flashback and daydream which give the film its unsettling but highly vivid quality. The overall effect is quite compelling, regardless of plot details. The psychology of the main character is projected with great control through the extraordinary, almost visionary sequences, and the young actor's restraint works very well, surely, rather in the way Louis Malle achieved in 'Au Revoir Les Enfants' - his expressions give a sense of a great deal being held back, which is very true to his age and character type. It also forms a contrast with the often violent or bloody events depicted. He is both damaged by his upbringing and looking for tenderness to make everything better, both in the form of a mother figure and a pubescent gay feeling towards the much more extravert Hodkann. The dream he has in the middle of the film is surely a wet dream which he doesn't understand but feels in some vague way is something to feel guilty about, as with everything else. This opens onto the most extraordinary scene in the night in the snow, where he goes out - all shot in blue tones in the mountain silence - magical! The relationship between the two boys seems to revisit a theme Claude Miller explored in the 70s in 'La meilleure facon de marcher' - another brilliant look at sexual feelings of a gay sort at a holiday camp, but there it was between the young men organising it whereas here the characters are much younger. As others have said, the music is also brilliant, right from the opening shot of an ordinary motorway where we suddenly hear a trumpet rasp like the sound of a braying elephant. And the Rossini is so atmospheric and startling ... all in all, it is hard to decide whether the film is more sinister or sad, but a strange beauty is there in spite of the awfulness and the plight of Nicolas remains haunting long after the film has ended.
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