AU REVOIR, LES ENFANTS (1987)

Louis Malle ’s fact-initiated film about the wary friendship of two 12 yr-old boys in a French Catholic school (one privileged, one a Jew hiding under an assumed name) during 1944 is so emotionally overwhelming that critical opinion has never been able to fully embrace its strengths, terrified of sanctioning its (legitimate) sentimental elements. While the film never reaches the breathtaking insights of Malle’s LACOMBE, LUCIEN (about a young man who joins the Gestapo when denied a place in the resistance), ENFANTS finds its own path which Malle negotiates with grace and infinite feeling. On this subject, perhaps only Vittorio De Sica ’s GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS, which cultivated similar critical niggles, reaches equal levels of grief and regret without seeming to bask in unearned, reflected sentiment.