#330: MALLE, Louis: Au Revoir Les Enfants (1987)

3 FILMS BY LOUIS MALLE {Spine #327}

MALLE, Louis (France)

Au Revoir Les Enfants [1987]

Spine #330
DVD

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

101 minutes
Color

Monaural

in French

1:66:1 aspect ratio

Criterion Release 2006

Director/Writer

Louis Malle was 55 when he wrote and directed Au Revoir les Enfants.

Other Malle films in the Collection:

429: The Lovers (1958)
#335: Elevator To The Gallows (1958)
#570: Zazie Dans Le Métro (1960)
Eclipse Series 2: Vive Le Tour (1962)
#430: The Fire Within (1963)
Eclipse Series 2: Phantom India (1969)
Eclipse Series 2: Calcutta (1969)
#328: Murmur Of The Heart (1971)

Eclipse Series 2: Humain, Trop Humain (1973)
#329: Lacombe, Lucien (1974)
Eclipse Series 2: Place De La République (1974)

#571: Black Moon (1975)
#479: My Dinner With André (1981)
Eclipse Series 2: God's Country (1985)

Eclipse Series 2: . . . And The Pursuit Of Happiness (1986)
#599: Vanya On 42nd Street (1994)

The Film

After working in the U.S. and making two flops in a row (Crackers [1984] and Alamo Bay [1985]), Malle returned to France to make the most personal, autobiographical film of his life.

Au Revoir is about being of that certain age — just on the cusp of becoming a teenager — when life is nothing if not completely uncertain and horrifically terrifying.

Malle portrays this feeling with his stand-in: Julien Quentin (a stunningly great young actor, Gaspard Manesse, age 11). Julien can barely stand to leave his mother for boarding school — but when Malle shows him arriving for the term, he projects a “don’t-mess-with-me” confidence that seems at odds with his vulnerability.

His seemingly unlikely friendship with Jean Bonnet (real name Kippelstein) (another great child actor, Raphael Fejtö) blossoms, perhaps because Quentin recognizes Bonnet’s innate intelligence.

**

Malle made so many different types of cinema in so many different forms.

His camera here is nearly invisible throughout. Even when presented with an opportunity to be flashy, he declines (think of the scene in the woods when Quentin finds his way to the “treasure”) …

The picture builds up to an undeniably crashing, emotional climax … but there are such treasures to be found in the earlier parts of the film:

• There is no score …
• The kids battling each other on stilts …
• The introduction of Joseph (François Négret) — making a deal with Quentin …
• Quentin wetting the bed …
• The piano lessons. The teacher — Mlle. Davenne — is played by Irène Jacob, in her very first film! (She would attain fame in the role of Valentine in Kieślowski’s final film: Three Colors: Red [1994] {Spine #590} …
• The Baths (“No Jews Allowed”) … Quentin in a tub, silently contemplating …
• Late at night in the dorm: Bonnet/Kippelstein is wearing a kippah and praying in candlelight. Quentin looks bewildered, but is perhaps catching on …
• … especially when he discovers the name “Kippelstein” written in one of Jean’s books. He questions Bonnet lightly …
• German soldiers returning the lost boys to the school …
• Quentin’s friends are asking about the experience — they saw 50 boars (they saw one!) and were shot at by the Germans (they were not!) …
• Of course, Bonnet/Kippelstein does not contradict Julien …
• Bonnet refuses Julien’s offer to share his paté. Julien waits until the (antisemitic) nurse leaves the room …
• “Because it’s pork?” He’s beginning to get it …
• Père Jean (Philippe Morier-Genoud) lecturing the (mostly rich) parents on the evils of uncharitable wealth. A stunning scene …
• One of the only dolly shots, moving past the chided congregation …
• The camera returns to Père Jean before turning 180° — as an outraged man stands up and leaves …
• Julien definitely notices when Père Jean denies Bonnet the communion wafer …
• Lunch where an elderly Jew is hassled …
• Mom (Francine Racette): “Mind you, I have nothing against Jews. Except for that Léon Blum. They can hang him” …
• Antisemitism in a nutshell …
• Watching the The Immigrant …
• Julien’s brother, François (Stanislas Carré de Malberg) tries to kiss Mlle. Davenne …
• A cut to Joseph and Père Jean laughing — two humans at opposite spectrums enjoying the universal nectar of laughter, and certainly the only time we see either one of them with such wide smiles …
• Now Julien is fully aware. Gathered around the piano to sing a hymn, Bonnet is hiding nearby. Julien covers for him …
• The friendship is finally fully cemented with — what else? — music, as the two kids play a four-hand jazzy duet …
• Peter Fitz is terrifying as Muller, the Gestapo agent.
• Joseph to Julien:
• “Don’t worry, they’re just Jews … you liked Bonnet?”
• Just as Joseph cannot comprehend why Julien is upset, Julien retreats from Joseph with a look of such disgust and disbelief; it is as if Malle remembered his own 11-year-old self coming to grips with a horror no 11-year-old should ever have to know — and he transferred that whole feeling to Manesse — who plays it perfectly on a silent visage …
• The last two shots: Bonnet at the gate, leaving the frame and Julien — his eyes wet, staring …

Film Rating (0-60):

57

The Extras

The Booklet

Twenty-four page booklet featuring essays by Philip Kemp (Childhood’s End) and Francis J. Murphy (Pére Jacques and the Petit Collège d’Avon).

Kemp:

“Au Revoir — for all its tragic subject matter and its elegiac finale — is anything but depressing. In the last scene, as the three Jewish boys and Père Jean are led away to their deaths, Jean Bonnet glances back, and Julien (a.k.a. the young Louis Malle) raises his hand in timid salute. In that small, affirmative gesture can be read a promise, which this film, with its emotional commitment, its richness of incidental detail, and the warmth and lucidity of its regard, forty years later duly fulfilled.”

Murphy:

“Père Jacques was eventually condemned to the Mauthausen concentration camp, in Austria. Within the camp, he quickly won the respect and admiration of his fellow prisoners, even the Communists. More than anything else, his selfless care of the sick and the dying, to whom he routinely gave half of his meager ration of food, touched his fellow French-speaking prisoners. They unanimously chose Père Jacques to represent them in their interactions with the liberating forces and the home countries of those who survived when their release finally approached, in May 1945.

By then, Père Jacques weighed only seventy-five pounds and showed undeniable signs of terminal pneumonia. Still, he refused special transport back to France and pledged to remain until the last French prisoner was repatriated. Four weeks later, he died in Linz, Austria. His remains were returned to France, where he was buried in the monastery garden of the Petit-Collège, on June 26, 1945. At his burial, Rabbi Jacob Kaplan, the future Grand Rabbi of France, eulogized Père Jacques in these words: ‘Thus we have seen cruelty pushed to its extreme horror and benevolence carried to its highest degree of nobility and beauty.’”

Commentary

None

Original theatrical trailer and teaser

Extras Rating (0-40):

36

57 + 36 =

93

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