La Mif (The Fam)

Opening with police raid La Mif (Mif is French slang for family) doesn’t hold back from the start as director Fred Baillif, co-written with Stéphane Mitchell. Underage sex in a girls’ home for troubled teens is a no-no leading to police involvement. With the consequence that the polices of home manager Lora (Claudia Grob) come under the spotlight when she is pulled up before the governing board to explain the incident, and her methods which run almost contrary to what are the expected conventions of the home.

This film set in a Geneva home for teenage girls from troubled backgrounds is as much a technical exercise in filmmaking as telling a story. Flitting backwards and forwards to fill in gaps it’s a little disconcerting at times and doesn’t do what there is a of a story a great deal of justice.

However this is more than made up for by the cast who are superb. The tendency to break away to concentrate and tell a story does fragment a bit but once pulled back into the fold of the film the girls are free to talk and there’s some remarkable banter, and the language is frank. Which comes over all the more natural with the semi-documentary approach which Baillif employs.

The troubled backgrounds don’t need to be dwelt on and aren’t. There’s enough information through their conversations to inform the viewer. So it avoids any sense of exploitation. And this is a much for the adults as Lora has her own set of problems.

La Mif works very much as a snapshot of their lives so there’s little sense of resolution or that much will change or what the future holds for the girls. As such we maybe don’t empathise with the girls as much as we may be expected to. There’s certainly no shortage of sympathy just difficult to get much more involved.

It isn’t helped by the running time which at around 110 minutes feels long, and exacerbated by the repetitive nature of the structure, it begins to buckle as the film progresses. This tends to make the film appear rather more style over substance.