Those indie filmmakers contemplating a directorial debut should beware of a dreaded contagion which I have dubbed "The Citizen Kane syndrome." You don't exactly have to be a boy wonder such as Orson Welles to churn out a well-received debut feature—all you have to do is be a technical virtuoso with a brilliant set design, highly original cinematography and an experimental, gripping score that diverts your audiences' attention from a screenplay that is so generic that virtually all psychological complexity is lost. Of course Welles managed to avoid all that until he substituted the stock melodramatic figure of his protagonist Charles Foster Kane for the real-life William Randolph Hearst, in the second half of what has come to be regarded as the most technically innovative film of the 20th century.Debut Director Brad Corbett also seems to have fallen victim to the "syndrome" in his rather specious take on the childhood of a wholly generic "Fascist leader." But before we examine the generic quality of his narrative, Corbett's talents still must be acknowledged. He has put together a story involving a period in history that is rarely covered these days—a behind-the-scenes look at the Versailles Treaty negotiations from the Allied point of view; what's more he's impressively employed Kane-like cinematography and music, creating a Gothic noir palette reminiscent of the German Expressionists.That being said, Corbett's story that seeks to explore the roots of fascism, manages to hold few surprises. His anti-hero (played by the young Tom Sweet) is named Prescott (aka "The boy")--he's the son of a married couple, a German woman and a US diplomat, who has arrived in France as part of the team to negotiate the terms of the Versailles Treaty with Germany, along with the other defeated countries in World War I.Corbett's narrative chronicles a series of tantrums the boy throws beginning with some rocks he hurls at parishioners leaving a church. The head priest tries to reason with the boy but his anti-social behavior continues. The mother's main crime, according to the film's scenarists, is that she overly-feminizes her son by failing to cut his hair short; at a certain point, the father's fellow diplomat mistakes the boy for a girl. On another occasion, the boy gropes the breasts of his French teacher--which I suppose is intended to suggest that he's acting out his Oedipal attachment on a more attractive substitute.Eventually the boy parades naked in front of the father's assembled associates and then locks himself in his room and won't come out, despite entreaties from his mother and a sympathetic maid who is eventually fired by the mother for encouraging him in his rebellious proclivities.Corbett takes a stab at blaming an authoritarian patriarchal culture for the boy's eventual descent into what appears more like Stalinism than Fascism at film's end—it's the boy's father who gives him a nice little whipping after refusing to comply with his demands to come out of his room. Thus, the boy's childhood traumas at the hands of his parents, serve mainly as the director's explanation for his embrace of evil as an adult.At the denouement, Corbett only offers a glimpse of his authoritarian martinet. And as argued before, it's a wholly generic portrait since we learn nothing about the future monster to be except that he's propped up by an adoring crowd of sycophants.Corbett also indulges in generalizing about the average man's apathy in the face of evil. Echoing Satayana's famous quote ("Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"), he has one of his characters, Charles, a widowed British diplomat, quote the Sartre- influenced novelist John Fowles: "That is the tragedy: Not that one man has the courage to be evil, but that so many have not the courage to be good."Corbett's greatest failure here is to develop some of the ideas from his source material—a short story by Sartre (from which he takes the title of this film)—in it, Sartre follows his protagonist who has a one-time affair with a pederast poet and then joins a group of youths, who assassinate a Jewish man on the street. This idea is also found in Rossellini's film—Germany Year Zero—where a prepubescent boy murders his father after coming under the influence of a Nazi-sympathizer, a pederast, in post-war Berlin.Encounters that prepubescent boys and young teenagers had with pederasts and certain kinds of homosexuals (not of the liberal persuasion)--as chronicled in such books as "The Hidden Hitler" and "The Pink Swastika"—suggest that there may be more of a direct connection to adults joining fascist movements later on than what Corbett lets on here. Again, his rather tame speculation finds its roots in his simplistic, generic understanding of "evil"—not based on true, real-life experience. Still, Corbett is not without talent on a technical level—a script with more psychological depth the next time around should afford him an opportunity to join the ranks of talented directors churning out compelling art-house offerings.

I had to read the other 16 reviews here before posting my own to see how my view of the film - which I just finished watching - compare to the others and ... Here are my thoughtsThe child actor with a long blond hair that is reminiscent of Renoir's Coco portraits is brilliant. great acting for a 8,9 year old - or whatever his age is.All other actors are really good too and they do convey the feeling it is 1918. I don't know where is this big old house - but somehow it does not fit into France. I would more think about the Balkans. But it is just a thought.Were they really people with black hoods and capes and all at funerals at that time? It is a rather strange and completely unnecessary scene in the film, though kinda effective.I really liked the mood of the film and I can appreciate the art vision of it. However, the film is too long and most of the time boring. I love French and I was forcing myself to make that as a plus point, but...The best thing about this film is music!But somehow its dramatic score and almost banging at the window tone is totally opposite to the calm and slow narative. That music would be better for horror films. All in all, I would not really recommend this film to anyone as I think it is too boring. And plus the ending totally makes no sense to me.

You're led to expect something really powerful and frightening by the opening shots of World War I and a nerve-jangling, portentous score. And, indeed, your expectations are well rewarded when the child of the title...wets his bed! plays an angel in the church Christmas play!It's hardly a bold or singular premise that a disturbed childhood will create a damaged, perhaps dangerous adult. But the movie's portrayal of cause and effect is so simplified as to be ridiculous. Plenty of neglected children--the condition is hardly the rarity the filmmakers seem to think, especially among wealthy people 100 years ago--grow up to be normal adults. Some become nasty ones. Some, in reaction, become humanitarians. If the cause and effect are so cut and dried, why don't we have 50 million fascist dictators? Could it be because a great many emotional and intellectual attributes, a great many factors of class and opportunity and geography and history are necessary for someone to become a fascist dictator? An unhappy childhood is hardly the only qualification!The script and director also ignore the most basic rules of portraying an unhappy childhood, rules that have been followed by every writer and director of merit. First: If you cry, they won't. Kipling, Graham Greene, Henry James, Dickens--everyone who has done this well has shown the mistreated child suffering in silence or near-silence, so that the reader or film-goer supplies the emotions of sadness and anger and indignation. In this film, however, the child is constantly outraged, insolent, aggressive, at times violent, so he pre-empts all our emotions. It is hard not to regard him as simply a nuisance and a bore. Second, feeling sorry for a character is not enough to make us like him or even be interested in him. The boy is front and center in almost the entire film. But he never does or says anything interesting, charming, sweet, selfless, funny, quirky. All he does is throw tantrums. Kids like this are one of the things I go to the movies to get away from!

A flawed but very promising directorial debut from Brady Corbet. The plot meanders a little, promising more than it ultimately manages to deliver. There are, though, plenty of great moments as the film unfolds and the increasingly oppressive atmosphere of isolation, alienation and menace intensifies. Scott Walker's soundtrack is gloriously weird and over the top, and is used to particularly powerful effect in the set piece sequences that open and close the film. The acting is uniformly excellent. Tom Sweet delivers a fine performance as The Boy, whose increasingly violent tantrums are a sign of grim things to come. This is an intelligent and subtle film. A very good debut, which falls just short of being great.