Review: 'Playground,' Belgium's Oscar entry, is a must-see drama about school bullying

You don't have to be parenting a grade-school kid for the Belgian drama "Playground" to shred your nerves or break your heart, though I can attest that it helps. (So does having been a grade-school kid yourself.) A sharply chiseled, wrenchingly observed first feature written and directed by Laura Wandel, the movie follows a 7-year-old named Nora (Maya Vanderbeque) as her primary education begins and she finds herself adrift in a cold, gray world of commonplace cruelty. You'll recognize a lot of what she witnesses and endures: the cruel insults, the violent scuffles, the ineffectual parent-teacher interventions. Mostly you'll recognize Nora, whose extraordinarily sad, watchful