After breaking through with the French New Wave of the '50s and '60s before heading to Hollywood, Louis Malle returned to his homeland for his last and most autobiographical film, winning the 1987 Venice Film Festival Golden Lion and two Academy Award nominations. It's very easy to see why.
Based on a tragic incident Malle witnessed at age 11 involving a Gestapo raid of his Roman Catholic boarding school, it follows Julien Quentin (Gaspard Manesse) returning to school after Christmas. He assumes a tough, rebellious facade to mask his really being a pampered mother's boy who still wets his bed. Nothing seems to have changed in his classes until the school welcomes three new pupils, namely Jean Bonnett (Raphael Fejto), an awkward, sycophantic boy who Julien immediately despises. But one night Julien wakes to find Jean praying in Hebrew and wearing a kippah. After then rummaging through Jean's locker he learns Jean's real name is Jean Kippelstein, and that he is being kept here because school priest Pére Jean (Philippe Morier-Genoud) has agreed to grant hunted Jews asylum in the school. Then, when they get lost together during a treasure hunt, they unexpectedly bond, until the Gestapo pays the school a fateful visit.
Au revoir les enfants is the only Malle movie I've seen, but I'm willing to call him a genius based on it alone. It's obvious how confronting it must have been for him to dramatize such a harrowing childhood memory but just by doing so he shows genuine bravery and remorse for the victims. More importantly, and perhaps thanks to the passage of time, he crafted a screenplay that effectively evokes the era and even how pre-teen boys interact, which he visualises very clearsightedly and delicately throughout. Very wisely also, all the boys (even Jean somewhat) are portrayed as mischievous or disrespectful but vulnerable (especially Francois Negret as Joseph, the school kitchenhand). The list of movies in various genres with child characters portrayed excessively with any of those traits is very long, and the balance here makes all the difference. Malle also gets very moving and sincere performances from Manesse and Fejto, who are now a composer and children's author respectively.
Obviously, this is a movie about childhood, not a children's movie. Subsequently, it is not a typical Holocaust or war (i.e. combat) film either. But it is no less authentic or universal. By revisiting something so unshakable for him at such a young age, Louis Malle not only shows how war and intolerance can shatter youthful innocence, more than any imagined childhood terror: he reminds us how, psychologically, adults are not so different from the children we once were. Au revoir les enfants is a masterpiece in every way.
Obviously, this is a movie about childhood, not a children's movie. Subsequently, it is not a typical Holocaust or war (i.e. combat) film either. But it is no less authentic or universal. By revisiting something so unshakable for him at such a young age, Louis Malle not only shows how war and intolerance can shatter youthful innocence, more than any imagined childhood terror: he reminds us how, psychologically, adults are not so different from the children we once were. Au revoir les enfants is a masterpiece in every way.
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