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Summary
In the picturesque French town of Thiers, several primary school children are learning
some important lessons in life as the end of the school term approaches. Patrick,
who lives alone with his invalid father, discovers an inexplicable attraction for the
local hairdresser, the mother of his best friend, Laurent. Sylvie is a strong-willed
little madam who mobilises her neighbours to help her when her parents leave her alone
at home one Sunday afternoon. Julien is a scruffy delinquent who finds it hard to
settle at school and spends a lot of his time walking the streets and thieving.
It isn’t easy being a child...
Review
In between his lavish period dramas and romantic comedies, François Truffaut made
a slight detour in the mid-1970s with this almost documentary-style portrait of young
school children at play in a small provincial town. The subject of childhood is
one which appealed greatly to Truffaut and features in many of his other films, notably
Les Quatre cents coups
(1959), L’Enfant
sauvage (1969) and his early short film Les
Mistons (1958). Truffaut’s own childhood was marked by rejection and brutality
- he never met his own biological father and his mother virtually disowned him - and this
is reflected in his work. As L’Argent de poche amply bears out, Truffaut
was gifted with a far deeper understanding of children than most film directors - and
this at least partly accounts for the acute sense of humanity in his films.
Truffaut’s love of children and ability to work with them allows him to create a work of great tenderness and sensitivity. The content of the film evolved in the course of a number of weeks over which the director watched how children behaved and interacted. This explains the film’s tireless spontaneity and sense of realism, offering an adult spectator a fascinating exploration of another world. The film contains numerous lessons in child psychology and ought to be essential viewing for anyone who has children or who wants to become a primary school teacher. It is also a hugely entertaining film, with some great comic situations - and also some moments of nail-biting suspense. Among the themes covered in the film, the one which is handled most forcefully is the notion that adults have a duty of care towards their children. This is an issue which was very close to Truffaut’s heart and it is not hard to glimpse his own experiences through the moving story of the ragamuffin scamp Julien Leclou. The beautiful monologue delivered by Jean-François Stévenin (playing the male school teacher) makes as valuable a contribution to the rights of the child as the campaigning undertaken by Truffaut outside of his film work. When it was first released in 1976, L’Argent de poche proved to be a hugely popular film in France and abroad. It was a much need commercial success for Truffaut after the staggering failure of his period piece, L’Histoire d’Adèle H. There are close similarities between this film and Nicolas Philibert's 2001 documentary Être et avoir - both magically transport the spectator into the minds of the children they portray, both won critical acclaim for their directors, and both proved to surprising box office successes. © James Travers 2003
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