Au Revoir les Enfants (12A.)
Directed by Louis Malle.
Starring Gaspard Manesse, Raphael Fejto, Philippe Morier-Genoud, Francois Negret, Francois Berleand and Francine Racette. 105 mins. In French with subtitles.
The late Louis Malle spent his thirty years of film making jumping between styles, trying to make sure the grass never grew beneath his tripod. He flipped between American and French films, serious and silly films, erotic films and talky films, very good and really quite rubbish films. But for all his wandering the film that he is best remember for is perhaps his most staid and traditional film, a childhood reminiscence stored away and made into an archetypal respectable middle class trip to the cinema, but done with transcendent skill and refinement.
The film is an autobiographical one, taken from the director's own experience, about the school day that would be the defining moment of his life. It can't be easy having that Story You Have To Tell always eating away at you, trying to judge the right moment to do it. When he was attempting to get a John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd picture off the ground or shooting nude scenes of 12-year-old Brooke Shields for Pretty Baby, was there a sense of guilt about putting it off, a nagging voice telling him to get on and deal with the Story You Have To Tell? Well, Kurt Vonnegut waited a couple decades before tackling the bombing of Dresden in Slaughterhouse 5 and Malle chose his time perfectly.
It's a film where the audience races ahead of the story, possibly all the way to the end. In the January of 1944 Julien (Manesse) returns reluctantly to his Catholic boarding school. He would prefer to stay in Paris with his mother (Racette) rather than the cold, drafty dorm rooms out in the provinces under the supervision of the frugal priests. When he returns there is a mysterious new boy Bonnet (Fejto) that the priests seems unusual protective about.
The film is shot in muted colours, overcast tones, perfect for a community that is devoted to being overlooked and is hoping to be passed by for the remainder of the conflict. The war impinges only gradually on the story. For the most part this is a school days narrative which really captures the mayhem and chaos of young boys cooped up togtether. They fight and bicker constantly and any moment of fellow feeling and kinship is hard earned. This is a sensitive drama about insensitive, bawdy, roughhousing hooligans.
Released in 1987, it lost out to Babette's Feast for the year's Best Foreign Language Movie Oscar. They are very similar films: they both sneak up on you, catching you off guard with a moment that suddenly overwhelms you. In Au Revoir, it is a scene an hour and quarter in, when most of the cast are sitting together watching a Charlie Chaplin film. As it cuts gently to and fro between the various faces, all of them gazing up in wonderment at the screen, the realisation sinks in as to just how far this undemonstrative, almost casual film has involved you in these lives, how unwittingly you have become emotionally invested in their fate. And of course, how gut wrenching the denouement will be.
Directed by Louis Malle.
Starring Gaspard Manesse, Raphael Fejto, Philippe Morier-Genoud, Francois Negret, Francois Berleand and Francine Racette. 105 mins. In French with subtitles.
The late Louis Malle spent his thirty years of film making jumping between styles, trying to make sure the grass never grew beneath his tripod. He flipped between American and French films, serious and silly films, erotic films and talky films, very good and really quite rubbish films. But for all his wandering the film that he is best remember for is perhaps his most staid and traditional film, a childhood reminiscence stored away and made into an archetypal respectable middle class trip to the cinema, but done with transcendent skill and refinement.
The film is an autobiographical one, taken from the director's own experience, about the school day that would be the defining moment of his life. It can't be easy having that Story You Have To Tell always eating away at you, trying to judge the right moment to do it. When he was attempting to get a John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd picture off the ground or shooting nude scenes of 12-year-old Brooke Shields for Pretty Baby, was there a sense of guilt about putting it off, a nagging voice telling him to get on and deal with the Story You Have To Tell? Well, Kurt Vonnegut waited a couple decades before tackling the bombing of Dresden in Slaughterhouse 5 and Malle chose his time perfectly.
It's a film where the audience races ahead of the story, possibly all the way to the end. In the January of 1944 Julien (Manesse) returns reluctantly to his Catholic boarding school. He would prefer to stay in Paris with his mother (Racette) rather than the cold, drafty dorm rooms out in the provinces under the supervision of the frugal priests. When he returns there is a mysterious new boy Bonnet (Fejto) that the priests seems unusual protective about.
The film is shot in muted colours, overcast tones, perfect for a community that is devoted to being overlooked and is hoping to be passed by for the remainder of the conflict. The war impinges only gradually on the story. For the most part this is a school days narrative which really captures the mayhem and chaos of young boys cooped up togtether. They fight and bicker constantly and any moment of fellow feeling and kinship is hard earned. This is a sensitive drama about insensitive, bawdy, roughhousing hooligans.
Released in 1987, it lost out to Babette's Feast for the year's Best Foreign Language Movie Oscar. They are very similar films: they both sneak up on you, catching you off guard with a moment that suddenly overwhelms you. In Au Revoir, it is a scene an hour and quarter in, when most of the cast are sitting together watching a Charlie Chaplin film. As it cuts gently to and fro between the various faces, all of them gazing up in wonderment at the screen, the realisation sinks in as to just how far this undemonstrative, almost casual film has involved you in these lives, how unwittingly you have become emotionally invested in their fate. And of course, how gut wrenching the denouement will be.
