Les Années sandwiches (1988)
Directed by Pierre Boutron

Film Review

Although competently made, with admirable attention to period detail, this well-intended portrait of adolescence and rejection doesn't quite hit the mark.  The acting is generally below the standard you'd expect of a provincial repertory company (apart from the impeccable Michel Aumont) and there is a real problem with the constantly shifting focus in the narrative.  Just from whose point of view is the story being told?  What is the point of the flashback narrative if, at the end of the story the two main characters never renew their acquaintance?

Film Synopsis

In July 1947, a Jewish boy named Victor runs away from his adopted home in the south of France and heads for Paris.  The 15-year-old has no one to turn, not after his parents were arrested and sent off to the concentration camps during the war.   Fate is kind to Victor.  He meets a friendly Jewish broker named Max, who offers not only a place to stay but also a job in his shop.  He then strikes up a friendship with a boy of his own age, Félix, although his personal circumstances are very different.  Félix comes from a respectable middleclass family, so his parents are understandably anxious about him becoming mixed up with a grubby street urchin.  Despite the obvious parental disapproval on Félix's side, the two boys soon become the best of friends.  This leads to near disaster for them both when Victor allows himself to get involved in illegal trading in petrol...