Au revoir, les enfants (1987) - film review

At the time of the Nazi occupation of France in 1944, a young boy, Julien, is evacuated from his home in Paris to a Catholic boarding school in the country.  He is teased by the other boys because, unlike them, he takes his lessons seriously and wins the praise of his teachers.  However, he has a rival, the quiet boy Jean Bonnet, who is teased even more than he is.  The two boys do not get on well at first but, in a short while, become the best of friends.  Then Julien makes an alarming discovery – Jean is actually a Jew, one of a number sheltered by the Catholic heads of the school.  This knowledge does not damage his friendship with Jean – until, one day, a squad of Nazi police arrive at the school, having received a tip-off from a disgruntled former employee.  The outcome will haunt Julien for the rest of his life.

A film that is both very perceptive about child psychology and deeply moving, Au revoir, les enfants is easily one of Louis  Malles’s best films – if not his best film.  Drawn from his own personal recollections of school during the war, this film tells a simple story with no clear message or morale standpoint.  It relates the day-to-day experiences of children in a boarding school in a way that is more realism than nostalgia, without major incident until the final, tragic conclusion.

The issue of anti-Semitism crops up on a number of occasions and ultimately provides the film with its unhappy ending, but despite some parodying of bourgeois attitudes on the subject it is a theme that Malle, wisely, plays down.

Similarly, the German soldiers are presented in a number of contrasting lights – on the one hand defending an elderly Jew from some pretty aggressive French Collaborators, whilst later on justifying why France has to be purged of the Jewish menace.  Malle leaves it to the viewer to mull over the inconsistency and absurdity of the Holocaust issue whilst he focuses on his more personal drama.

The film’s strength – and Malle’s great achievement – is in portraying the children as fully-formed adults, with an awareness (if not a full understanding) of their predicament and the ability to consciously act for good or ill.   This avoids the sentimentality which weighs down many films about children and the result is a very watchable and genuinely engaging film.  Towards this end, Malle is ably served by two very capable child actors, Gaspard Manesse (Julien) and Raphael Fejtö (Jean).

© James Travers 2000

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Au revoir les enfants is a deeply sentimental account by Louis Malle of a semi-autobiographical story, in which emotions are emphasised by calculated use of the camera.  Through his long and medium shots, Malle brings to the spectators a world of coldness and menace, France in WWII under Occupation by the Germans. Meanwhile, the many close-ups on the two heroes, Julien, the Catholic boy, and Jean, the Jewish one, present two faces which express an interior anguish.  A pale white and grey palate contribute to the atmosphere of sadness and helplessness. The movie begins and ends with a separation. The last scene, in which the priest-headmaster marches to prison with his clandestine Jewish students and says goodbye to those who stay behind, is one of the best epic scenes in French cinema for its contention and dignity.
Adam Gai (Israel)

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