Attention, les enfants regardent (1978)
Directed by Serge Leroy

Film Review

Director Serge Leroy had three respectable thrillers to his name before Alain Delon approached him, in the capacity of a producer, to direct his next film, an adaptation of Peter L. Dixon and Laird Koenig's bestselling American novel The Children Are Watching.  Although he gave himself top-billing, Delon was to play effectively a supporting role in the film, most of the screen-time being taken by the four lead child actors, one of whom - Richard Constantini - had impressed the actor-producer when he saw him in Leroy's previous film, Les Passagers (1977).  Attention, les enfants regardent was to be one of Alain Delon's riskiest ventures as a film producer, its success depending on how well Leroy could coax convincing performances out of the four child leads.  Although the film was not a great success financially - it attracted an audience of just under half a million in France - it is one of Delon's more interesting films and makes some valid concerns about the potentially harmful effect of television on young children.

Delon is on screen for less than twenty minutes, but he makes a memorable impression as a sinister-looking loner about whom absolutely nothing is revealed.  His character's behaviour towards the children is alternately aggressive and affectionate, almost paternal, and even though there is something unmistakably menacing about his portrayal we can't help feeling that he is the victim, at the mercy of four supposed innocents who, thanks to the influence of television, have no concept of morality and are therefore deadlier than he could ever be.  In what is a thinly veiled re-working of William Golding's Lord of the Flies, the child protagonists, having dispatched their unwanted minder, form a society which is a grotesque parody of the adult world.  They spout racist invectives and other obscenities without any awareness of what the words mean, they smoke, stuff their faces with junk food, and generally act as they see grown-ups behave on their television set, which becomes the sacred totem around which their world now revolves.

Television not only guides the children's actions, it legitimises their bad conduct, and they see this as normal behaviour.  Their parents are too busy, too selfish to care about what becomes of their offspring - their idea of parental responsibility is to send them the occasional video message whilst they are away working in another country and to employ a woman who can't speak French and clearly hates children to look after them.  Lacking parental guidance, glued to the television night and day, it is no wonder that the children quickly develop a horribly warped view of life and become monsters with angelic faces.  'It's not us that killed him!' one of the children protests after they rid themselves of their second adult encumbrance.  'It was the telly!'  And the remark is more true than they can ever imagine.

After the utterly terrifying La Traque (1975), which depicts the horrific extremes of pack mentality, Attention, les enfants regardent is Leroy's second most disturbing film.  Unlike the director's previous thriller Les Passagers it underplays the drama and the tension and opts for a more realist approach, so that the appalling nature of the children's behaviour is magnified by the apparent normality of their life together as a self-contained family unit enjoying a languorous summer holiday in a Riviera villa.  The first killing is a piece of harmless mischief that goes horribly awry, the second a pre-meditated murder that is no more than a clumsy imitation of what the children see on the screen every day.  Delon's introduction into the plot (an ironic reversal of the stranger who rides into town to save the day) is the only obvious contrivance, but the way in which he manages to inveigle his way into the children's world and becomes a part of their twisted fantasy is chillingly convincing - which is a credit to both the actor's unusually self-effacing performance and Leroy's wisely understated direction.

Serge Leroy went on to make several notable thrillers after this (some with a cogent moral or political subtext), but Attention, les enfants regardent is the one film he made that is most likely to stick in your mind - a worthy contribution to the polemic that still rages to this day over the potentially harmful effects of television on the developing mind.  Since this film was made there have been many others dealing with the desensitising effect of television and cinema on society's attitude to extreme violence - Michael Haneke's Funny Games (1997) and Mathieu Kassovitz's Assassin(s) (1997) spring to mind - but Leroy's film is particularly effective in dealing with the subject because it never allows us to see the perpetrators of the crimes as monsters.  Rather, they are the natural end-product of a process of conditioning that is so much a part of our lives that we fail to see its inherent danger.  It is something that should give us all great concern, but the truth is we scarcely notice it.

Film Synopsis

With their parents away working on a film in Ireland, four children, aged between 5 and 13, have the run of the family villa in the south of France.  Marlène, Dimitri, Boule and Laetitia have grown used to their parents' absence and make the most of their freedom - playing on the beach during the day, watching television in the evening.  They resent being looked after by their Spanish housekeeper-cum-childminder Avocados, especially when she sends them to bed early just so that she can entertain her older male admirer.  One day, the children are amusing themselves on the beach when they find Avocados sound asleep.  To wake her up, they push her out to sea on her sunbathing mattress, but in doing so they unwittingly cause her to drown.  Realising what they have done, Marlène and her younger siblings make a pact to speak of it to no one.  They will carry on as before, without Avocados, until their parents return.

Unfortunately for the four youngsters, their crime was witnessed by a stranger, a sinister-looking man in his thirties who appears to be looking for a temporary refuge.  The stranger forces his way into the villa and imposes himself on the children as a substitute childminder.  Naturally, the children resent this and agree that they must get rid of the unwelcome visitor, whom they mistrust and fear.  The stranger appears pleased when he finds a collection of firearms in the villa, and even happier when he comes across a car in the garage.  Despite being threatened, the children refuse to tell him where the car keys are.  That evening, the children make up their mind that they have no choice but to kill the stranger - before he kills them...