By filming the turmoil of adolescence in long takes, the new Netflix series reveals a raw and unsettling truth. Led by Owen Cooper, who is captivating in his very first role, adolescence abandons us without bearings, at a child's level, in the heart of the unspeakable.
It all begins in a modest house, on the edge of silence.
Adolescence , a British miniseries directed by Philip Barantini, doesn't simply tell a story: it imposes it upon us, in a single, continuous movement. Each episode is filmed entirely in one long take , without a single visible cut. A rare feat, almost jarring for the viewer, who is compelled to follow the irregular rhythms of the drama without ever looking away. As if growing up today were less about learning than about an inner collapse.
The plot can be summed up in a few stark words: thirteen-year-old Jamie Miller is arrested for the murder of a classmate. Amidst this social and familial upheaval, the series takes us not into the hushed corridors of police stations or the cold halls of courtrooms, but into glances, silences, and restrained gestures. Adolescence is less an investigation than an X-ray of collapse.
Owen Cooper, a stunning revelation, embodies this tragic tremor.
Virtually unknown just a few months ago, the young actor delivers a performance of rare precision, never resorting to melodrama or forced emotion. His Jamie is not a symbol, much less a monster : he is a lost child, pulsating with conflicting emotions, suspended between innocence and guilt. In this demanding first role, Cooper impresses with his ability to inhabit silence, to let a muted panic, incomprehension, and distress surface on his face—all nuances that the camera, both complicit and cruel, captures with remarkable precision.
A radical approach was needed to grasp such a truth.
The choice of the long take, far from being an aesthetic artifice, becomes an organic necessity. Each camera movement mirrors the characters' labored breathing, their fear, their shock, their anger. One thinks of Sam Mendes' 1917 or Barantini's previous film, Boiling Point , but here the stakes are even more visceral: it's about capturing the inner chaos of a child confronted with the irreparable.
The Miller family, crushed by the accusation, is filmed with the same brutal tenderness.
The mother (portrayed with heartbreaking restraint by Erin Doherty) wavers between blind protection and agonizing doubt. The father, silent, flees in clumsy gestures. The camera explains nothing, it exposes. Every averted glance, every slamming door, every trembling hand becomes a silent chapter in this ordinary tragedy. Through them, an entire world—that of precarious homes, of young people left to their own devices, of toxic online friendships—takes shape before our eyes.
Corn (Mais) adolescence goes beyond a simple news item.
The series raises questions without being preachy. It shows how extreme violence, far from arising from nowhere, often stems from a chain of tiny acts of abandonment, misunderstandings, and isolation. It sketches, without ever imposing it, a painful reflection on the invisible fractures of our connected society : the deleterious influence of social media, the normalization of violence, the lack of guidance, and the increased loneliness of a generation bombarded with images and demands.
Adolescence does not look for culprits.
Neither an apology nor an indictment: the perspective is relentlessly sober. Violence emerges as a consequence, not as an aberration. In this delicate balance between empathy and lucidity, the series avoids all the pitfalls of pathos or sensationalism. It simply observes – and compels us to observe as well.
By closing adolescenceSomething remains suspended.
A metallic taste in the mouth, a tension beneath the skin. The feeling of having crossed, without a safety net, the precise moment when everything changes. And the unsettling certainty that this "moment" doesn't belong solely to fiction.
Available to watch now on Netflix, Adolescence unfolds in four episodes of rare intensity.
