- Louis Malle's Au Revoir Les Enfants is surely one of the greatest and most personal film depictions of the deplorably far-reaching effects of the Holocaust. Much of the film's potency comes from its depiction of events as seen through the eyes of an innocent named Julien Quentin (Gaspard Manesse). For someone like Julien, a student at a rural Christian boarding school for affluent French boys, the Second World War must have seemed like a complete abstraction. Sure, he and his fellow classmates occasionally encounter German patrols and hear air raid sirens, but their lives are completely removed from anything resembling an active front. Instead, the children spend their days barely tolerating their teachers, stilt-walking at recess, and constantly shoving each other around the way young boys will do.
- One day, an awkward new student named Jean Bonnet (Raphael Fejtö) arrives at the school. Two things are immediately clear. One is that the resemblance of Jean's last name to an Easter hat is inevitably going to get him teased. The second is that Jean is at least as bright, if not brighter, than Julien, who has traditionally been quite popular amongst his classmates. So do the two boys naturally bond over their shared love of literature? Not immediately. In fact, Julien's first words to Jean are something to the effect of "Don't mess with me if you know what's good for you." Not a very warm welcome, but one that perfectly captures the insecurity of the early teenage years.
- As Julien and Jean get to know each other, gradually the two become something like friends. It starts off with the lending of a few books. Eventually, they're banging out piano duets during air raids and accompanying one another on wilderness excursions. Still, Julien notices strange things about Jean, like the fact that he never touches his pâté nor receives communion. He also witnesses Jean lighting candles at night, and what about that book inscription that refers to someone named Kippelstein? The audience presumably realizes the implications of these discoveries long before young Julien does, and that only enhances the effect. Finally, Julien confronts Jean, who is understandably terrified that his secret will be discovered. "Are you scared?" asks Julien. "All the time," Jean responds. The remainder of the film proves that he has every right to be.
- While Au Revoir Les Enfants is in every respect a remarkably touching and authentic film, what surprised me most was how perfectly it captures the behaviors of a collection of adolescent males. Although my own high school was neither French nor a boarding school, I was pleased to discover that boasts, brawling, and bawdiness are apparently universals that transcend cultural and temporal boundaries. Unfortunately, so too are the completely uninformed prejudices about other religions and cultures that, in the case of Au Revoir Les Enfants, carry some truly tragic consequences indeed. The events depicted in this film represent a truly difficult way to say farewell to one's childhood, especially when one notices that Malle's voice quavers during the film's final lines because he never had the chance to say a proper goodbye.
- As implied, the events in the film were based on an actual incident in Malle's youth.
