'Adolescence' and Its Espresso-style One-Take

Author's Note:

Are aesthetics of a TV series worth analyzing? Critics typically discuss TV shows from a topical perspective. While viewers often praise a show's cinematography and art design in their reviews, they tend to use descriptions like "cinematic" or "each episode is like a big movie" as compliments. Though well-intentioned, these comments suggest that a TV show's highest aesthetic achievement is simply to resemble film. This reflects our limited vocabulary when analyzing TV aesthetics—critics rarely examine TV shows on their own merits. In today's media landscape, TV has cultivated an enormous audience, with many viewers identifying primarily as TV-show fans rather than movie fans. While TV shows and films share many artistic elements, this raises a question similar to how we approach animation criticism: should we analyze TV shows on their own terms? The answer is that both TV shows and animations have their own value, and they deserve distinction. TV can share aesthetics with film while maintaining its own unique beauty.

Hello Peliplaters!

Before diving into rational analysis, let's recall our experiences of adolescence. For many of us, our memories of youth are both fragmented and dense—like chocolate chips in a Frappuccino. They create a complete flavor through scattered yet resonant moments. The sweetness arrives intensely but fades quickly. Our adult identity, supposedly the answer to everything, dilutes these sweet chunks of youthful memories like melting ice in a Frappuccino. These memories dissolve into this sugary iced mixture; we can only attempt to capture its essence through nostalgic sighs.

With that being said, we find that Philippe Barantini takes a distinctly different approach to portraying an adult's perception of youth in his latest series "Adolescence." While we tend to romanticize our younger years through a nostalgic lens—seeing them as sweet memories—Barantini confronts youth's inherent bitterness head-on. Like cocoa beans in their natural state, adolescence carries its own raw bitterness. Though children often possess sharp insights about problems in their environment, they lack the agency to address these realizations. The youth's notorious confusion stems from this imbalance: too much awareness paired with too little power to act. Didn't we all wish to grow up faster? Though some memories of adolescence hold genuine sweetness, they form only a small part of the entire phase of everyone's younger days. The dominant experience during this phase is one of helplessness—the inability to change one's circumstances.

In Episode 1, Barantini portrays this helplessness through an unexpected arrest. The story opens with two police officers chatting in their patrol car—one father complaining about his child's refusal to attend school. His complaint is notably a statement rather than a question, as he assumes his child's resistance is purely emotional without investigating its root cause. While viewers might not notice anything unusual at this point, what follows renders this detail insignificant: this same father leads armed officers to forcibly enter another father's home, where they arrest his equally desperate and helpless 13-year-old son. The boy's room, with its blue walls adorned with spaceships, creates a heartbreaking contrast to his curled-up figure in bed. Beneath the menacing presence of black-uniformed officers and their dark gun barrels, his adolescence abruptly halts, and his family's daily routine derails. The family's desperate calls fade into bureaucratic silence, much like the ignored text message from the officer's child. The irony cuts deep—while that child could at least express helplessness by refusing to go to school, this arrested boy and his family have no avenue for their despair. At the police station, officers mechanically recite procedures, asking if they understand various terms and noting they can file complaints if dissatisfied. But what could they possibly complain about? They can't even recognize that they're experiencing trauma because they've been stripped of their right to say no.

Barantini's use of the one-take technique is ingenious. The constantly moving, relentless camera forces everyone to confront trauma. To some extent, this refusal to edit is a silent, minimalist, yet brave way of saying no—his camera refuses to cut away, which represents a refusal to escape.

Moreover, Barantini's one-take approach doesn't simply eliminate montage—it transforms it from an art of collage into an art of fitting. Traditional editing relies on seamless transitions to create an illusion for viewers. While directors occasionally use techniques like jump cuts to deliberately display intrusive emotions, they typically employ natural transitions to maintain thematic flow. The one-take approach can evoke equally powerful themes, but these must emerge from an unprocessable organic whole. The creator cannot reshape the footage through recombination. Though they can plan what appears in the frame and what sounds occur off-screen, once filming ends, they must accept the result in its entirety. The creative subject (the filmmaker) and creative object (the footage) exist independently, yet they complement each other. Neither can dominate the other. While the footage can be reshot if necessary, it cannot be reconstructed after filming. Only one path remains to create meaning: organically weaving the camera's movement with the story being told.

Meanwhile, the one-take technique effectively prevents the director's subjectivity from overshadowing the characters' own perspectives within the story. Barantini's camera moves like a curious ghost, wandering through a narrative that isn't his own and following whatever catches its interest. At one moment, it focuses on a suspect; the next, it trails after a passing an administrative officer. The camera's gaze is guided purely by curiosity, making Barantini a true observer. Even when his lens lingers on certain characters, he never adopts their point of view. The audience, alongside him, passively receives information as events unfold in real time, with no chance to pause or reflect. Each moment carries the potential for revelations that reshape our understanding. Our curiosity remains active but impotent; our emotions intense but ineffectual. For any character we grow attached to, we must accept that crucial events might be unfolding beyond the frame's edge, silently determining his or her fate.

To viewers, the one-take technique reveals the creator's observational strategy with stark clarity. The director's choices of what to focus on or ignore exist independently of where viewers direct their attention. Through the director's ghost-like presence, we experience the story while being equally immersed, yet our individual regrets about missed details may vary based on our different points of focus. Consider the suspect's sister in the first episode—she's perhaps the most overlooked character. Though her presence is fleeting, almost negligible, we later discover she bears the deepest family trauma. When the police chief finally pauses his procedural duties to explain the situation to the family, we glimpse her leaning helplessly against her mother's shoulder. She faces the imminent loss of a loved one, but she is powerless to intervene. This restrained, kind girl hesitates to burden her family with her emotions, while they lack the capacity to address her feelings. To Barantini's ghost-like lens, the police chief's case updates naturally command more attention than a silent figure.

In Episode 2, Barantini's lens transforms from a curious ghost into a lost one. While he ostensibly follows the police chief to conduct an organized investigation at the suspect's school, the chaotic situation there scatters his focus. He can only react passively—trying to concentrate on the case but unable to ignore the students' disruptive shouting. When one student suddenly strikes another and accuses him of killing her friend, Barantini attempts to extract case clues from the aggressor but only discovers that she has emotional disorders and troubled parents. Through Barantini's lens, we viscerally experience the disorder in school education. The gaps—between teachers and students, between the police chief and his child, between students themselves—are as wild and untamed as the Amazon rainforest.

At the end of Episode 2, Barantini's ghost realizes his focus on the case has hit a dead end—rather than contemplate more clues, he yearns to escape. The camera abandons the confused aggressor who doesn't know where to go after school, rises to the sky, soars over the town's houses, and finally settles on the face of the suspect's father after he lays flowers at the victim's death site. His face reveals confusion, regret, sorrow, and emotions beyond description. Barantini's camera cannot and doesn't turn away from that father's face; the episode must end with this shot. Is the case's progress important? Rather than important, it's something we're forced to pay attention to. The question becomes: what have we overlooked due to this forced attention? After an entire episode of disordered focus, the camera closes on a certain yet completely disorderly fact: A GIRL IS DEAD.

Regarding Episodes 3 and 4, many critics have already analyzed them thoroughly, so I'll skip over them. To conclude this article, let me answer one crucial question: What makes Barantini's one-take technique unique? Returning to our coffee metaphor, think of "Adolescence" as a cup of coffee. If Christopher Nolan were to direct this story, he might craft an epic multisensory spectacle through carefully orchestrated combinations. He'd likely begin with a striking coffee poster, guide audiences through the coffee-making process, let them savor the aroma of coffee beans, and weave in flashbacks and asides about coffee's origins and history—constantly reminding viewers that each element is part of the coffee experience. This would create a rich, multilayered experience for the audience.

Barantini, however, seeks something different from such composite artistry. He wants viewers to experience coffee in its purest form—believing that any artificial intervention would diminish their appreciation of coffee's raw, inherent wildness. Does this stripped-down approach sacrifice narrative depth? Does it make the coffee-tasting experience one-dimensional? Not at all—it's simply an alternative form of storytelling. Barantini simply places the unaltered cup of coffee before you, leaving its appreciation entirely in your hands. While he acts as the coffee's maker before serving it to you, once it reaches the table, he steps back to become just another customer at the coffee shop. He transforms completely into a witness to the coffee's story—nothing more, nothing less.