Événement

Au revoir les enfants @ Robert Classic French Film Festival

Louis Malle, 1987, 105 min., color, Blu-ray projection source

Au revoir les enfants tells a heartbreaking story of friendship and devastating loss concerning two boys living in Nazi-occupied France. At a provincial Catholic boarding school, the precocious youth enjoy true camaraderie until a secret is revealed. Based on events from writer/director Louis Malles own childhood, the film is a subtle, precisely observed tale of courage, cowardice, and tragic awakening.

Calling the film Louis Malles quasi-autobiographical masterpiece, the Guardians Peter Bradshaw writes that the film remains breathtakingly good. There is a miraculous, unforced ease and naturalness in the acting and direction; it is classic movie storytelling in the service of important themes. As an evocation of childhood it is superb, comparable to Jean Vigos Zéro de Conduite and François Truffauts The 400 Blows perhaps better. Every line, every scene, every shot, is composed with mastery. It has to be seen. The New York Times is equally laudatory: It has taken Mr. Malle more than 40 years to make Au revoir les enfants. Every film that Mr. Malle made in those intervening years has been preparation for Au revoir les enfants. Like The Dead, which it resembles in no other way, its a work that has the kind of simplicity, ease and density of detail that only a filmmaker in total command of his craft can bring off, and then only rarely.

With an introduction and post-film discussion by Jean-Louis Pautrot, professor of French and international studies at Saint Louis University.