Review of
Au Revoir Les Enfants
Reviewed by Young Il Kim
Director: Louis Malle
Starring: Bunch of Nobodies
Before Louis Malle (better known for robbing the cradle with Candice Bergen) kicked the bucket in 1995, he created a legacy with his body of work. Okay, I will be honest. I am not a Louis Malle fan and haven’t seen any of his works except for Au Revoir Les Enfants (Good-Bye Little Children). Au Revoir is a movie that takes place during World War II. As a stand-alone movie, it is a heartbreaking story of a childhood friendship torn apart by religion and war. However, understanding why the movie was made may help you gain a greater appreciation.
Malle made this movie for himself. When he was 12 (around the age of the characters of the movie), Malle was sent to a Catholic boarding school near Paris that was a refuge for several Jewish students. One of the students was Malle’s rival for academic accolades and also a close friend. If you are either ignorant or a Holocaust revisionist, you may not understand the historical significance of this period. Now as the rest of you may know, Jews were hunted down by the Nazis in much the same manner as Darth Vader hunted down the Jedis. And the French surrendered to the Germans because they were…French. So Malle’s boarding school was no longer a safe haven for Jews. A disgruntled employee became an informant to the Nazis; and as a result, the priests and teachers were arrested by the Nazis, and the Jewish students were sent off to concentration camps, presumably to die.
Now that I have given you the biographical context of the movie, to give you a plot summary would be redundant. There have been many movies that have been made about the Holocaust and World War II. Heck, if you go to the foreign section of Blockbuster, there is a whole sub-section devoted to these. While many of them are made with a clear purpose of pandering to the Oscar voters (i.e.- Schindler’s List and any documentary about a Holocaust survivor) and others are simply told awkwardly, there is a naive innocence to Au Revoir that makes the story such a tragedy, and, more importantly, such a great film. While it may seem clichéd, Au Revoir tells the tale of a French boy’s initial animosity towards Jean Bonnet (the main Jewish boy), which eventually transforms into a close friendship. As you see the friendship blossom, you cannot help but have flashbacks from Louis Malle’s perspective. This story is told very deliberately and from the eyes of a 12-year old.
I think that this movie was a way for Malle to come to grips with a horrible tragedy of humanity in his childhood years. Malle even makes an apology to the Jean Bonnet character, perhaps as a cathartic gesture. I have nothing else to say, so good-bye my little children.
