There is a moment when we each lose our childhood

Rating: Null/10 (17 July 2005)

"Au Revoir les Enfants" (French, 1987): Some say this is Louis Malle's masterpiece. Fair enough. Although set in the last years of WWII, at a Catholic boys school in France, this is not a "last gasp fight to the death against the Germans" action film with gun toting youngsters. It is a story about BOYS, and it simply happens to be 1944. They're children of rich parents  boys who've been shuffled out of Paris (etc.) to the safer countryside. They're silly, awkward, conniving, antsy, and typical. Yes, they can sometimes hear fighting in the distance (but they're too busy with their own tiny squabbles), they are required to respond to air raids (but consider it a game), and they do see Nazis on occasionbut mainly, they're just typical, dopey boys. Slowly - very slowly - one of the brighter boys suspects that not is all what it seems, there at his school, and, with time on his hands, begins searching for secrets and answers. What he finds will change his life and lives of many others. Few films have looked at real war through the eyes of children, and this is possibly the best.