Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go (2007)

Yesterday I also attended the screening of Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go, another premier screening at the 2009 BigPond Adelaide Film Festival, produced and directed by Kim Longinotto. This is another documentary featuring children as its central focus, but what a complete contrast to Los Herederos this film is.

To quote, in part, from the Festival notes:

“For the forty children who call it home, Mulberry Bush is their last chance. Excluded from school for extreme behaviour, and often having suffered severe emotional trauma, they are given three years at the Oxford boarding school to try to turn their lives around. The fragile young boys at the heart of her [Longinotto’s] film lash out in shockingly extreme ways -- hitting, swearing and spitting their way through the misery of their blighted childhoods.”

Forty children; 108 staff members; and days filled with tears of rage, and physical and verbal abuse from children as young as eight and nine years of age.

It is hard to believe what the teachers and staff at Mulberry Bush had to contend with. No-one could ever argue that the children attending this boarding school were over indulged or spoilt, but hasn't the school ever heard of 'time-out'. Don't they have a room where children can be left for ten minutes at a time to scream and rage on their own without putting other children and staff at risk? Wouldn't that be better than forcing staff to physically restrain errant children by virtually sitting on them?

And what staff! These people must have the patience of the biblical, Job. And just like Job, who took whatever his Lord was prepared to heap on him in an attempt to test his resolve - the staff of Mulberry Bush put up with whatever some of these children dish out to them.

Unfortunately, I couldn't help thinking that the boundaries weren't clear enough for the children, and that as long as they were (up to a point), able to get away with spitting on staff and kicking and punching them, their behaviour would take longer to control.

Of course, none of the above constitutes a review of the film, it is more a criticism of the how I felt the boarding school operated.

Again, like Los Herederos, Hold Me Tight... makes no use of voice overs or other on screen aids to try and explain what is unfolding before the viewers. Again, you are left to draw your own conclusions. Of the forty children one assumes are at the school at any one time, we are presented with just three or four - all males, although females students are clearly present.

Were the few children examined in the film the worst of forty students? The 'best' of the school? There are no clues, and no answers.

Maybe I was just emotionally wrung out from viewing Los Herederos but by the end of Hold Me Tight... my nerves were on edge, and I was happy to get outside into the sunshine and fresh air.

Three stars
Image courtesy of BigPond Adelaide Film Festival

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