Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Motompa Go in cold, and you're likely to emerge with your blood boiling. This has to be seen to be believed.

Kamila Bell This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

mcbarre I get fascinated by the human condition movies. What can happen in some unusual condition, how may we react? How others came across it, in real life cases or in fiction. What could happen if both parents die and you don't want your family to be separated. This film remind me "The Lord of the Rings", B&W version, where chaos is the norm. Please don't expect the kids to behave as in "Big Daddy" where the kid is bathed with swimming suit, or as in "Home Alone" cute boy and clown thieves, these 2 movies are far away from reality than some kids sleeping in the nude and running in the backyard in a summer hot night. "Home Alone" and Cement Garden" are two opposite movies coming from two different human minds performed by actors who were not harmed, one created for the children audience and North American people an the other to the European adult mature audience.

HJN Simply a piece of art. More than this: a magnific, dark and lonely piece of art in the middle of a desert. The cement is hard and hide things that must to be hide. In this film the past time is erased, digged in the deep under 10 feets of cement. One of the characters says (in the final of the movie) - You are sick!-, but he don't know that the sick was himself.10/10 - So far the best cinemaThanks for your art, Andrew Birkin

billcody This is one of those movies that is disturbing because it seems like a scenario that could happen in real life, and probably does. I won't go into details because almost anything that I could write about this film would be a spoiler.Suffice to say, that a family of youngsters makes is forced to make a rash decision out of desperation and then deal with the consequences of their actions. The viewer is then forced confront moral issues that are both difficult and troubling in a complex way. Unlike, the standard Hollywood film - or even the standard English film for that matter, this film is about shades of grey instead of blacks and whites. It is filled with compassion and pathos. A real throwback to the kind of movie that marked the great English cinema of the mid 60's. You can almost see a young Tom Courtney starring in this film if it had been made 3 decades earlier. A wonderful film!

thomandybish Disarmingly strange film about a family of children fending for themselves after first their father, then their mother dies. Oldest son Jack eschews responsibility, leaving next oldest Julie to handle the everyday chores. In the midst of all these devestating changes, Jack and Julie begin to develop a singularly unusual bond, one that is threatened when Julie invites the outside world into their private domain by dating an older man.This film sparks comparisons to the similarly themed OUR MOTHER'S HOUSE, but the two films differ dramatically. While the children in OUR MOTHER'S HOUSE construct an elaborate fantasy world for themselves(based in part on the dead mother's fanatic religious beliefs), there's no such pretentious in THE CEMENT GARDEN. The children live in a cinder block house, with a cement garden out back, on a plot surrounded by a flat, desolate looking landscape. There are several scenes where the children sit around saying nothing, doing nothing, something that never happens in the other film's active household. The costumes and household furnishings are nondescript; you can't figure out if this film is set in the sixties or the nineties. The overall feel is one of banality, lethargy, and a total absence of passion or vitality. Perhaps it's only in a situation like this that the relationship Jack and Julie have can flourish, and Jack can transform from a petulant, self-absorbed boy to a responsible, loving young man. Strange atmosphere, but very rewarding.