On the Sly

"Every Friday evening, 6-year-old Cathy gets strapped into the backseat of the family car for the drive with her parents to their country house. Each time, once securely buckled, she's ignored. Helmer Ringer captures the inner bargains kids make, the "if Mom notices me, then it means I'm important" sort of thing, focusing exclusively on Cathy's p.o.v. From the audience's standpoint as much as from Cathy's, her parents really do ignore her. When it's time to go back to their home in Paris, Cathy lets the car door slam without her, and her folks drive off. Once they realize she's not there and pull up to the house again, Cathy decides she's better off in the woods rather than risk an unholy scolding... Cathy takes to the woods with unsqueamish determination, befriending a fish, building a small hut for herself and hiding from search parties. Things don't change until her father finally starts thinking with his daughter's kind of imagination." Variety, Jay Weissberg