Games that can't be said

France | Plot | A petal 8.0

It is also a film based on the director's own experience, directed and starring by her. Highly similar to letter stories.

Audra is an eight-year-old girl, the most talented child in the dance class. She dreamed of becoming the chief ballet dancer since she was a child. My parents have a best friend named Jimmy, who always wants to tickle her and tell her it's a "secret that can't be told". As an adult, Audra looked back on her dancing career and the whirlpool in her life before she realized what happened in her childhood …

Jimmy, who has three sons, likes the clever Audra very much. He asked Audra to play with the doll so that he could dress her up. He urged her into the bathroom to start the game, and she couldn't refuse with words like "I'm disappointed", "You hurt my feelings" and "Come on, it won't be long".

Audra tried to ask for help, but a mother couldn't control her emotions. 10 years old, sexually assaulted for the first time. When she went home to wash her bloody underwear, her mother took it as a period and ignored her several times when she wanted to talk. When she finally overcame her fear as an adult and sued Jimmy, her mother's evaluation was "You are too young, you may remember wrong" and "Jimmy is handsome and doesn't look like a pervert". Even considering how Jimmy will be treated by his wife, son and grandson, it is suffocating.

Through fragmented memory and communication with psychologists in adulthood, the film restores the story of Audra, explaining why her dance is always full of anger, and her fear of intimate relationship, paralyzing herself with a chaotic life and a hard shell. There is a long solo scene in the film, which hints at Audra's psychological process, from the first painful venting in class to the firm resistance after suing Jimmy, and finally the release and self-acceptance in a street fight, which is very artistic and impactful.

It's still a cliche. For a child, the earlier sex education, the better. Instead of letting a child spend his life with indelible pain, it is better to teach her/him how to protect himself/herself, how to refuse injury and how to deal with it as soon as possible.