Metacritic reviews

Clandestine Childhood is the impressive first feature by Argentine director Benjamín Avila.

A charming, involving first feature, Clandestine Childhood muscles its familiar coming-of-age material into something more vibrant and urgent than the usual.

If such outré flourishes don't fully lift the story past the limitations of innocence-lost storytelling, they do suggest Ávila is an artist worth keeping an eye on.

Avila has a tough task, visualizing violent and complicated events through a child's eyes. The calmer scenes are staged in staid and somewhat clunky fashion, but the graphic animation depicting the worst moments is starkly effective.

Benjamín Ávila structures the film as a series of precious moments, remembrances of a difficult year when the politics of patria and family got in the way of his puppy love.

As is often the case with directors who adapt their own life-histories, there's the sense that a little too close to his material.

Designed to highlight the uneasy coexistence between everyday childhood experiences and the intense pressures of living with parents secretly fighting the junta, the picture has strong moments, but is bogged down by a script that regurgitates standard-issue ideas without finding anything interesting to say.

When a filmmaker proves as reluctant as Mr. Ávila to speak up about the past, to engage with its full complexity, it can be hard to hear what he's saying.

Clandestine Childhood is a sincere effort but also rather sincerely a meager one too.