Au Revoir les Enfants (1987)

Au Revoir Les Enfants (1987)

A wrenching, sensitive, all-too-true drama set in a gorgeous French wooded outpost during World War II. The main actors are boys, and they play their parts with unusual conviction, unexaggerated but with intensity. And the anti-Semitism that arises, though inevitable in Nazi territory, comes subtly and really stings. The movie isn't complete without this horror, but the horror is made complete by the really vivid recreation of this kind of private boys school--a period movie at its best.

Director Louis Malle has not only a message, but a sensitive feel for the medium--for making fluid the flow and background of the plots of his films. It's also a fairly complex mix of types, and you can somehow keep them all straight as it goes--as straight as you are meant to as the facts unfold. In the end, it confirms a familiar story of Nazi terror, but one that can't be told too often.

Fmovies: This movie is perfect!! I watched it when I was 11 years old, and now, I see this Malle film as the best work that he could be done for the world. Thanks Mr. Malle. I hope that you met with Kipperlstain in Heaven. ;-) The friendship in the "Au revoir les enfants" was treated with many sensibility, following all steps of human nature. Julien and bonnet do not became friends at the beginning, but their interests one by the other move tears. This aspect will become the movie more beautiful. Enjoy this movie. I had it as my preferred.

This movies is one of those movies that you can love, but hate. It makes you hate what happens in the movie. You get so attached to the characters, and when things happen to them, you hate it. But the movie is powerful, wonderfully written and directed by Louis Malle and defiantly should be seen anytime one is studying WWII or the Holocost, or if you have free time, and are looking for a good heart-wrencher. I watched it in French, with subtitles, and that makes it all the better.

Au Revoir les Enfants fmovies. Louie Malle's film is a deeply personal examination of the Holocaust, childhood friendship and accidental betrayal. Its young protagonists are affable without being overly sweet or cloying, and despite the semi-autobiographical nature of the story, Malle never gives over to cheap sentimentality the way Steven Spielberg might. While this is one of the films that got lost in the quagmire of Orion Classics, other titles from this period have been rescued and released on DVD through MGM. Long since out of print on VHS, it's shameful this film isn't readily available to those who might wish to examine the Holocaust from a different cinematic perspective, or to those seeking a powerful story that never falls prey to pathos.

On seeing this movie several years ago my accompanying colleagues said of the film: what a load of self-indulgent, confusing, French stylized rubbish. They bemoaned the slow pace of the film, of the 2 dimensional directing and lack of any action or violent death scenes!

Those words still linger with me now and has made me realise that perhaps a lot of the movie-going public these days feed on the latest sfx pyrotechnics, more ingenious ways of abstract killings, lots of needless sex and not letting a good intelligent story get in the way.

Films like Les Enfants are going to be even more difficult to track down if Hollywood and some of the European studios opt for the fast Buck route to riches.

Les Enfant is a truly wonderful & yet harrowing account of life in a Catholic boys boarding school during the dying embers of the Nazi occupation of France in WW2. One of the new boys happens to be Jewish but the headmaster chooses to keep such identities covert while still offering him sanctuary and an education in spite of all the risks he takes.

To be fair I know little of Louis Malle previous to this film, but I think he must have poured his life's soul into writing & directing Les Enfant.

No detail, harrowing or otherwise, is spared; we see so much beauty amongst the horrors of occupation & collaboration; but also the blossoming relationship between the two lead boys and how initial envy & hatred of the Jew is somewhat diluted by the realities that this is no infantile school game but that life and death for the Jewish boy hangs by a thread if anyone at the school should reveal his true identity.

The final moments are perhaps one of the most sad & dramatic scenes I have ever seen. These days a lot of people would be waiting for some great heroic entrance from a big movie star to sort out all the misery and leave us with a reassurance that "it really wasn't all that bad back then was it".

But there are no heroes at the end of this movie, at least not the kind of heroes Hollywood serves up. The boys in this film are the true heroes right to the very end, primarily for their spirit of humanity in the face of impossible odds.

This is the hard reality of war amongst children growing up not only in the face of their own adolescence (and all the problems that serves), but also with the dark fingered claw of Nazism hanging menacingly like the the Scythe of the Grim Reaper.

This film will move you in so many directions and will hopefully bring you back down to earth from the current Hollywood shallow circus of pap & style-over-content.

Its a difficult film to track down, and the reason for this can be attributed to the first paragraph of this review.

*****/*****

(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon.)

This is a masterpiece of cinema, a work of genius by one of the greatest directors, Louis Malle. He does everything with the barest touch, just the slightest emphasis, without rancor or any loading of the deck. He understates and plays fair always. He has complete control of his story and of the audience. He knows what they believe and what they expect. He respects that, but he doesn't cater, and he is very gentle about leading us to the conclusion. He makes it beautiful although it is horrible.

Gaspard Manesse as Julien and Raphael Fejto as Jean are unforgettable and a reminder that in film it's important to have a good cast. Yet, I suspect Malle could have made geniuses of any number of talented young boys in their parts. This is your Catholic boys school coming of age film without lecherous priests or the brutality of children; that is, no more than is necessary, just what is real and seen in perspective, the context being the Nazi occupation of France in 1944. It is amazing how Malle manages to show the bestiality and brain dead stupidity of the Nazis by presenting them at their most gentle. If one can damn by faint praise, one can destroy by contrast. Compared to what is human and natural we see the Nazis, as their pretentious Reich is falling apart, chasing after children, obsessed with psychotic racist delusions. Through the objective eyes of the children we see the evil. Malle need only let the facts speak for themselves.

I think artists working in any medium would benefit from study of this film.

What it says to us is be honest, be fair, keep it simple, but not too simple. Use not a brush stroke more than necessary, and pay attention to every detail, especially the small ones. But while we can learn from and appreciate, it takes genius to pull it off. It can't be done by connecting the dots.

I am struck by a little irony on the jacket of the video. It has an early Siskel and Ebert quote: 'One of the year's best films.' That's a little embarrassing unless the year is a hundred years long.

Incidentally, the sublime, beautiful and wondrously talented Irène Jacob made her debut here in a small part as a piano teacher.