L'Enfance nue
1968 Drama
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Credits
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Summary
Abandoned by his own parents, François, a nine-year old boy, is placed in the care
of Mr and Mrs Josselin, an ordinary working class family with a young daughter of their
own. The Josselins learn that François has serious behavioural problems and
he soon becomes too much for them to cope with. As the boy’s unruly conduct worsens,
he is returned to social services and ends up with another adopted home. His new
foster parents are Mr and Mrs Minguet, an old couple who already have their hands full
with their elderly mother and another foster child, Raoul. For once, François
appears to become settled and manages to find a genuine friend in the Minguets' frail
but kind-hearted mother. However, when the latter dies, François’ behaviour
suddenly takes a turn for the worse…
Review
Maurice Pialat’s first full-length film, L’Enfance nue
is a remarkably effective piece of social realist drama featuring a disturbed
young boy failing to integrate with the world around him. The film is almost a re-make
of François Truffaut’s celebrated
Les 400 coups (1959), but takes a far more
realist line, using non-professional actors and much cruder editing and photography.
Pialat acknowledges the support given to him by Truffaut (both moral and financial) by
naming his principal character François, a reference to Truffaut’s own troubled
and largely loveless childhood.
The things which best characterise Pialat’s work are amply illustrated in L’Enfance nue, which, with its raw brutality, uncompromising truth and non-judgemental stance, deserves to be rated as the director’s best film. Every character is portrayed with an extraordinary sense of realism, to the extent that you feel you know him or her as a personal acquaintance – nothing in this film feels staged or artificial. What Pialat does and does so well is to take a slice of life and to preserve it perfectly on film, adding nothing, taking nothing away. It is this which makes his cinema so powerful and so pretty well unique. Who could fail to be moved by the plight of the unloved François and his well-meaning foster parents, the Minguets? Whilst Pialat’s unconventional style has a tendency to alienate the spectator in some of his later films, here his approach works perfectly and the result is nothing less than a humanist masterpiece. © James Travers 2006 Write a review for this film... |
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