Louis Malle  is a director renowned for films portraying microcosms of the environment of the second world war. Au Revoir Les Enfants is arguably his most famous, and most heart-wrenching film. It is also autobiographical, which would partly explain the depth of emotion and empathy that Malle is able to evoke from his viewers.

Au Revoir Les Enfants (“Goodbye, children”) chronicles the development of a friendship between Julien Quentin (Gaspard Manesse) and Jean “Bonnet” (Raphael Fejtö), who is one of three Jewish boys in hiding at the Roman Catholic school that Julien attends. The plot is full of interruptions reminding the characters of the German occupation of France, but the lives of Julien and Jean run on smoothly, allowing the two to become good friends right up to the tragic end.

Julien is a good student who appears to be a standoffish sort of perfectionist. Manesse plays the half-bullying role to perfection. Julien, however, has insecurities under the surface — his mother is clearly trying to get him out of her flirtatious life in Paris, and his father has been absent for two years, working at a plant in Lille. Julien’s weakness manifests itself physically in his bedwetting, which he tries desperately to keep a secret in the boys dormitory. Jean is a mystery kid — the sort of person who provokes innumerable questions. Julien begins by being nasty to the new student: “I’m Julien. Mess with me and you’ll be sorry,” and moves on through curiosity, and finally friendliness after he discovers Jean’s hidden Jewish faith. The two connect over the shared secret, and their shared troubles of hiding a weakness. The casting for these two boys on the verge of leaving childhood is perfect. Manesse and Fejtö seem to really be Quentin and Bonnet, and their performance is very engaging and realistic.

All throughout the film, Malle juxtaposes cruel reality with the childish innocence of Julien and Jean’s friendship and life at school. The boys play-joust on stilts as French collaborators search their school for draft-dodgers. Julien sneak-reads a book during an algebra lesson — held in the school’s bomb shelter. Julien and Jean get lost during a game of ‘capture the flag’ in the woods — and are picked up and brought back by a car full of German soldiers. However, the focus of the film is not on the wartime environment, but of how the boys persist in living their lives despite the hardships, and how Julien and Jean grow stronger friends out of their difficulties. This makes the end, where harsh wartime reality breaks in on the little world of the school, even more tragic. At the very last, when German soldiers lead the three hidden Jewish boys and Père Jean (the headmaster of the school, Philippe Morier-Genoud) away, the remaining students call out “Au revoir, mon père.” (“Good bye, father.”) Père Jean replies: “Au revoir, les enfants.” This is where the tears started rolling down my cheeks. Père Jean is bidding farewell to children, but Quentin (the Louis Malle representative in the story) is effectively bidding farewell to childhood. In the face of the great sacrifice of Père Jean, who had risked himself to save the boys, Quentin is struck by the reality that someone would just wrench his friend away to a certain death.

Fittingly, the general colors of the film are all greyish blue and black, and the story takes place in the bitter winter. The film opens with the focus on Julien and his mother in a crowd, by the train that will take Julien to school, and ends with a focus on Julien standing still, bidding his best friend goodbye as he departs on a journey to a certain death. The parallels of these two scenes focuses in on Julien’s progression through the film — beginning by being cozened by his mother, and ending by sympathizing with another.

Malle also does not neglect to have the viewer notice the parallels between Julien and  Jean’s characters by revealing their painful secrets at about the same time. Another boy notices Julien’s bed-wetting, and very soon after, the Gestapo arrives to take Jean away. Plot setups like this conspire to break the hearts of viewers, as it seems that things cannot go right in the end.

Knowing the reputation of WWII films, I should have been ready for sadness and heartbreak in Au Revoir Les Enfants. But Louis Malle’s storytelling, and the ending scene of farewell — like the “O Captain” scene of The Dead Poet’s Society — were too much for my Kleenexes to bear. Don’t say au revoir to French films until you’ve seen Louis Malle’s masterpiece.