LES HAUTS MURS / BEHIND THE WALLS (2008)

Too good to go missing behind the algorithms.  French director Christian Faure, here also co-writing, who works mostly in French tv, made this stunning realization of Auguste Le Breton’s semi-autobiographical novel (posthumously published) about his teen years in the early 1930s, when he escaped from an orphanage only to be tossed in an ’educational’ reformatory run under conditions that could pass for a French Penal Colony.  (Le Breton best-known for movie-friendly crime novels RIFIFI/’55 and BOB LE FLAMBEUR/’56.)  Faure immediately throws down the gauntlet, opening his film by quoting the iconic ending of François Truffaut’s THE 400 BLOWS/’59.  But with no freeze frame to stop the action, we continue on to life in a prison-like work-house that might have inspired Lord of the Flies . . . or PAPILLON.  The situations follow recognizable dramatic paths, but this can’t stop them from being believably horrifying.   (Faure overloads once or twice and somewhat misses the mark in his use of music; a few times here suspense would expand without any, and in a superb idea of a boy who whistles the tunes he imagines he plays on a paper keyboard.  Here,  Faure ought to let us participate in what the boy hears in his head as well as what the other ‘boarders’ don’t.)  But nearly everything believable: from the vicious top boy who plays droit du seigneur with the newest young captives; the solid lead boy who runs his group with honor; the rich kid whose step-father has ‘parked’ him here; the sympathetic wife of the director who runs what passes for school; the penitent parent whose visit comes too late; the constant dream of escape.  An amazingly rich load of story & character arcs in an hour & a half, hard to shake even when things start to feel pulpy.  Well caught early ‘thirties atmosphere, too, and a shocking end card that informs us that these institutions lasted till 1979.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Two films mentioned above: BOB LE FLAMBEUR; 400 BLOWS.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/08/bob-le-flambeur-1956.html  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/05/the-400-blows-les-quatre-cents-coups.html