AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS Movie Review
Goodbye, Children
Louis Malle was a filmmaker so interested in telling different kinds of stories that the questions of what he would do next and how he would do it were always gloriously unpredictable—all that remained constant was the generosity and humanity he brought to each of his films, regardless of subject. Here, that subject is autobiographical. In 1944, during the German occupation of France, three Jewish students were hidden in the Catholic boarding school that Malle attended. What ultimately happened to those children should not be surprising to any citizen of this century, yet the story that Malle has decided to share with us is not nearly as simple as good versus evil. Near its conclusion, this suspenseful, devastating, and ultimately ennobling memoir about guilt, honor, and responsibility, about bravery that—tragically and ironically—fell short of its goal because of the compassion that inspired it, distills a lifetime of trying to make sense of human nature into a few perfectly edited frames of film in which a child's eyes shift their gaze from one part of a schoolroom to another. Malle's simple, profoundly eloquent film is an uncluttered yet stunningly complex account of a moment that would change the story's teller forever. As all of his best films do, Au Revoir les Enfants adds to our knowledge of the human condition.
NEXT STOP … Lacombe, Lucien, The Sorrow and the Pity, The Designated Mourner
1987 (PG) 104m/C FR Gaspard Manesse, Raphael Fejto, Francine Racette, Stanislas Carre de Malberg, Philippe Morier-Genoud, Francois Berleand, Peter Fitz, Francois Negret, Irene Jacob; D: Louis Malle; W: Louis Malle; C: Renato Berta; M: Franz Schubert, Camille Saint-Saens. British Academy Awards ‘88: Best Director (Malle); Cesar Awards ‘88: Best Art Direction/Set Decoration, Best Cinematography, Best Director (Malle), Best Film, Best Sound, Best Writing; Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards ‘87: Best Foreign Film; Venice Film Festival ‘87: Best Film; Nominations: Academy Awards ‘87: Best Foreign-Language Film, Best Original Screenplay. VHS, LV ORI, FCT, HMV