Heiners Filmseiten – Play (en)

Play

German title: Play – nur ein Spiel?
Greek title: Το Παιχνίδι
Russian title: Игра
Original title: Play

Youth drama – Sweden, France
Production year: 2009
Movie length: 115 minutes

Director: Ruben Östlund
Writer: Ruben Östlund, Erik Hemmendorff
Cinematograph: Marius Dybwad Brandrud

Movie description:

In a shopping mall in downtown Gothenburg, five youths (all black, with ages ranging from eight or nine to mid-teens) pursue a group of three clearly relatively well-to-do young boys and ask them the time. When one pulls out his mobile phone to look at the time, he is accused of having stolen the phone from the first boy’s »little brother«.
The five youths then suggest that the other boys accompany them a short distance away to show the phone to its supposed rightful owner to clear matters up. Soon the threesome find themselves walking to a series of different locations, never allowed to leave and forming a relationship similar to kidnapper and kidnapped.
Eventually the five boys arrange a running race, with the winner to get all – with both groups pooling their wallets, phones etc – but naturally the five scammers cheat and the others become their reluctant but consenting victims.

»Play« is an astute observation based on real cases of bullying. In central Gothenburg, Sweden, a group of boys, aged 12-14, robbed other children on about 40 occasions between 2006 and 2008.The thieves used an elaborate scheme called the »little brother number« or »brother trick«, involving advanced role-play and gang rhetoric rather than physical violence.

Boy Actors