Au Revoir Les Enfants ***** (1987, Gaspard Manesse, Raphael Fejtö, Francine Racette) – Classic Movie Review 1927

Writer-director Louis Malle’s haunting 1987 semi-autobiographical spellbinder, based on a searingly traumatic event in his childhood, is an exquisitely made, heart-breaking real-life story of appalling cruelty and inhumanity that resonates in the widest context. Set in January 1944 at a chilly, exclusive countryside boys Catholic boarding school near Fontainebleau, it is one of the greatest films made about World War Two and Nazi-occupied France.

The film concentrates on the growing relationship between one upper-class young 12-year-old French boy called Julien (Gaspard Manesse) and his reserved new classmate Jean (Raphaël Fejtö in his first and only feature film). The bright, popular Julien is asked by the frosty headmaster Pere Jean (Philippe Morier-Genoud) of the school to look after the shy, sensitive new boy. Their relationship starts with much friction, yet gradually Julien learns to respect Jean and they form a bond, sharing a love of reading and music, but Julien gradually discovers Jean is Jewish.

The school seems to be a haven from the horrors of World War Two in 1944. But it turns out that the headmaster has decided to protect Jewish children and provide what he thinks is a safe haven from the Nazis and that Jean is being kept hidden by the school priests under an assumed name. The school’s much-taunted kitchen helper serving lad Joseph (François Négret) is stealing supplies from the school to sell on the black market, a racket that he runs with the boys. And, when the headmaster finds out, he fires the youth. This provokes a terrible crisis and appalling tragedy.

Malle directs steadily and carefully, encouraging extraordinary performances from the two boys and fine ones from the whole ensemble. Malle lovingly charts all the haunting minutiae of his youthful, far-off period and place, while building his moving yet unsentimental film to a searing, heart-breaking climax that’s devastating.

It won the Golden Lion award for best film at the Venice Film Festival in 1987, one of five awards there, as well as seven French Ceasars. It was voted Foreign Language Film of the Year at the London Critics Circle Film Awards in 1990. Malle won BAFTA Film Award in 1989 for Best Direction.

Malle said the events that inspired the film haunted him all his life. He waited many years till he felt ready to make it, and finally confronted it in the summer of 1986 on returning to France after difficult years filming in America. ‘I went back to Paris and spent two weeks in complete isolation writing the first draft.’

Malle said: ‘It is only when memory is filtered through imagination that the films we make will have real depth.’ This he has achieved magnificently in Au Revoir Les Enfants. It’s fitting, then, that so personal a work is now arguably his best known and most admired film. Malle died on November 23 1995, aged 63.

It is re-released in the UK on 30 January 2015.

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© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1927

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