Ray Pride

Most weeks, twenty or thirty new DVD titles are tossed into the marketplace and worthy work is often overlooked. Bertrand Tavernier's 1999 "It All Starts Today" is a DVD I didn't get around to watching when it was first released a couple of months ago, but it's one I've gratefully watched twice since (with the commentary on a second go). Based on the experiences of Dominique Sampiero, a real-life French small-town kindergarten teacher, (who co-wrote the rich script with Tavernier and his daughter Tiffany), the town's depressed economically and socially, and it's a wonder he isn't as well. It's a beautiful portrait of the pressures facing committed and talented teachers when society basically has stopped caring for its young. Tavernier is a major filmmaker, yet in the U.S., he's more than an underappreciated director: he's an underdistributed one, despite the diversity and passion of his output. To name only a few movies, "Coup de Torchon," his 1981 adaptation of a Jim Thompson novel, is one of the shaggiest studies of sociopathic behavior (and it's on Criterion); his 1992 "L. 627," which "It All Starts Today" resembles, is a study bureaucracy and other pressures bearing down on a drug cop; and 1995's "Fresh Bait," an engrossing and frightening study of teen female rebellion. Tavernier's command of the camera is always heartening, and the DVD's commentary in his fluent but zingily accented English lets the viewer in on many of his secrets about perspective, editing, direction of non-actors and children, and in particular, listening to the world, for specifics that suggest the universal. "It All Starts Today" is a tender, empathetic gem that shouldn't be missed.

"It All Starts Today" is available on Accent Cinema, distributed by Facets Video.

(2003-02-26)

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