On dirait que … (Let’s Say … )
(Seen at the 16th annual VCU French Film Festival at the Byrd Theatre in Richmond, Va.)
“On dirait que … ” is a gimmicky and repetitious, if cute and harmless, documentary that asks kids ages 8-12 to act out their impressions of what their parents do for a living. The children of farmers pretend to be farmers; doctors’ kids play doctors; shopkeepers’ kids, shopkeepers; and so on. It’s basically a high-concept French version of “Kids Say the Darndest Things,” and it would play better as a 45-minute special on public television than as an 82-minute feature. The kids are adorable, of course. Unsurprisingly, their perceptions of their parents’ occupations are sometimes oversimplified, sometimes off-base and sometimes strikingly accurate. The movie would benefit from some outside perspective — perhaps a child psychologist who could put into context the way young minds parse adult experience. But it just goes on to the next group of kids acting out the next job, making the same point again and again. I was more intrigued by the offspring of grocers, restaurateurs and, yes, circus performers than by the doctors’ kids — in part because they’re more diverse, in part because they simply need to know more about what their parents do. But if “On dirait que … ” has anything important to say about race and class in France, you’ll have to do what the kids do — figure it out for yourself.