Ernesto, a seven-year-old boy who has the body of a thirty-year-old man, decides, upon attending his first day of school, that he no longer wishes to attend, because he does not wish to be taught matters that he does not know.
Direction
Duras turns a tantrum into deadpan existential theater.
Acting
Bogousslavsky commits fully to being the most insufferable child alive.
Writing
Dialogue that weaponizes logic like a toddler Sartre.
Director
Marguerite Duras
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Duras adapted this from her own 1978 novel, essentially trolling the French education system she'd already escaped.
Axel Bogousslavsky was a non-actor discovered in a Paris café; Duras cast him for his 'unbearable certainty.'
FR
