Film Review
Isn't it marvellous? You wait fifty years for a remake of your
favourite classic French film and then, just like a London bus, two
come along in the same week... September 2011 was certainly a
boon month for dedicated fans of Yves Robert's
La Guerre des boutons, offering
us not one but two completely different remakes of the film within the
space of a week - the first directed by Yann Samuell with the same
title, the second directed by Christophe Barratier (of
Les Choristes fame),
distinguishing itself with its boldly imaginative title
La Nouvelle
guerre des boutons (an obvious misnomer, as it is set nearly 20
years earlier...). Strictly speaking, neither film is a remake;
unable to obtain the rights to Robert's screenplay, both directors had
to come up with their own interpretation of Louis Pergaud's celebrated
1912 novel, which has recently come into the public domain and has
found its way into the French school syllabus. For the record,
Yves Robert's was not the first adaptation of Pergaud's novel -
director Jacques Daroy has that distinction with his 1937 film
La Guerre des gosses (in which
actor-singer Charles Aznavour made his screen debut, aged 12). It
is also worth mentioning that in 1994 John Roberts directed an updated
English language version, set in Ireland. It is a measure
of how highly regarded Yves Robert's film is that the other versions
seem to have been wiped from our collective consciousness.
Will the two latest versions of
La
Guerre des boutons stand the test of time, or will they go the
way of most remakes, destined to be devoured by the bloated shadow of
the original? Only time will tell. One thing that can be
said about the two 2011 versions is that they both purport to offer
something new, rather than just slavishly rehashing what has gone
before. Whereas Barratier sets his film in France at the time of
the Nazi occupation (an idea which had been considered by the rival
production but hastily discarded as implausible), Samuell opted for the
early 1960s (the time when Robert's film was made), the backdrop of the
Algerian War providing a suitable context for a story which examines
the innate savagery of man through the seemingly innocent war games
enacted by children. Samuell's film also has a more noticeable
female presence than Robert's film, introducing an important girl
character (Lanterne) and thereby widening the scope of the film so that
it can encompass a wider range of themes, including some (female
emancipation and sexual awareness in pre-teens) that would have been
virtually taboo in Robert's time. The anti-war subtext of
Pergaud's novel is still apparent (notably in the now iconic nude
battle scene), but is far less effective than in Robert's film,
although by touching on more pertinent contemporary themes the film
perhaps has more relevance to today's audience.
Having himself grown up in the 1960s in a setting not too dissimilar to
that depicted in the film (an attractive Burgundy village), Sammuell
has ample opportunity to draw on his own experiences, so the film
inevitably has a strong auto-biographical element to it. The film
was shot in one of the most picturesque regions of France, on the
border between Limousin and Poitou-Charentes, the natural splendour of
the countryside beautifully captured by cinematographer Julien Hirsch,
who had previously won a César for his work on Pascale Ferran's
Lady Chatterley (2006).
One of Sammuell's chief concerns was to make the film feel as authentic
as possible, and to that end he employed only non-professional actors
for the child roles. However, to make the film marketable he was
obliged to cast established actors (Alain Chabat, Fred Testot and
Mathilde Seigner) in the main adult roles. When it was discovered
that two versions of
La Guerre des
boutons were in production at the same time, the producer of
Sammuell's film (Marc Du Pontavice) was offered a substantial financial
incentive to delay its release by twelve months. Du Pontavice
declined the offer.
Like all remakes (or, in this case, a quasi-remake),
La Guerre des boutons suffers from
being too readily compared with the original film. Yves Robert's
1962 film is so fondly regarded that some would consider it
sacrilegious to remake it, as pointless as trying to
remake Truffaut's
Jules et Jim
or Godard's
Le Mépris.
A more serious objection to Sammuell's film is that it doesn't go nearly
as far as it should to bring the story up to date. The obvious
question is: why not set it in the present time? Instead, the
film succumbs to a prevailing (and worrying) tendency in French cinema
today to wallow in rose- (or sepia-) tinted nostalgia, content to
impose modern idioms on a naive representation of a past that never
was. Yann Sammuell is perhaps more daring than most in that he
attempts to work present-day concerns into the guts of his film instead
of merely dusting these over the surface - the real war his film
presents is not one between rival gangs of children but rather one
between children and their parents, something that today's audience can
readily relate to. Yet, even though the film does make a spirited
attempt to be more than just a whimsical nostalgia fest, it still feels
painfully out-of-touch and struggles to be much more than an anodyne
piece of family entertainment. If the film has any charm at all,
this is almost entirely down to the engaging presence of so many
charismatic and likeable child actors, in particular Tristan Vichard, who snatches
our sympathies almost as mercilessly as Martin Lartigue did in the 1962 classic. Alas, placed in the same tank as Yves Robert's great
shark of a film, this tame little minnow doesn't really stand much of a chance...
© James Travers 2012
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
In 1960, two small villages in the south of France are at war. The
hostilities have been going on for generations, although it is a very peculiar
kind of war, fought by the young boys of the two opposing villages.
There is nothing that either side will not do to score a victory over the
other. Traps are laid and battles are fought with increasing vigour,
neither side willing to put an end to this eternal conflict. To fight
for the honour of one's village is the noblest cause a boy can have, and
so the war goes on, year after year.
So determined is one side to prove its superiority that it takes the unprecedented
step of admitting a girl into its ranks of boy warriors. Lanterne is
no shrinking violent like most girls - in fact she turns out to be just as
resourceful and spirited as her male cohorts. The only thing the fearless
combatants have to fear are their parents, who are not slow to show their
displeasure when their warring offspring come back home with their clothes
torn to shreds and covered in mud. To spare themselves this dishonour,
one side decides to go into battle naked. The other side is quick to
follow their example...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.