12/13/09 - Au revoir les enfants (Kinder)

Au revoir les enfants (Kinder) (1987, 104 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092593/

This was another film I watched for my film class. I picked it because I'd actually heard really good things about it and the preview we watched in class seemed pretty good.

The film follows a boy's school during World War II France. The main student there is Julien Quentin (Gaspard Manesse) but the most important boy for the purpose of the plot is Jean Bonnet (Raphael Fejtö), a Jew in hiding. As the story progresses we see how the various students treat the new kid and then at the end we get a climax as the Germans discover the hidden truth.

Acting where the story centers around kids is always troublesome. Almost all kid actors are abysmal and their inclusion in prominent roles is probably my biggest pet peeve in all of movies. However, for the most part these kids work. I mean, the acting isn't terrible so it's already better than 90% of child acting. Overall, Manesse and Fejtö hold their own in the movie in my opinion.

The problem I had with the movie was that there were a lot of plot elements that were just left unexplored. One, there was the girl that Quentin's older brother liked. What happened to her? She played piano and there was the smooching between the two and then we don't see anything else. Really, the whole piano player was a useless character. She comes up in like two or three scenes but nothing is resolved as we get to the ending.

Next, I thought the entire relationship between the new student of Jean Bonnet and the other kids could have been explored a lot better. There was a fat kid that constantly bullied Bonnet but nothing more comes of this. And perhaps most importantly, the relationship between Quentin and Bonnet is left unresolved in my opinion. They seem to waver back and forth between being friends and betraying one another. True, at the end they do seem to be more like friends, but I never really got the feeling that they became true friends. I guess I felt that the longing look Quentin gives to the taken Jews is not justified by his actions that have transpired in the previous two hours.

Overall, I gave this film a 5/10. While I pretty much only mentioned negatives above, the entire story and acting is pretty good. Nothing really stands out as amazing but the atmosphere and story itself are enjoyable enough to make this film a good watch.