Au revoir les enfants tells a heartbreaking story of friendship and devastating loss concerning two boys living in Nazi-occupied France. At a provincial Catholic boarding school, the precocious youths enjoy true camaraderie—until a secret is revealed. Based on events from writer-director Malle’s own childhood, the film is a subtle, precisely observed tale of courage, cowardice, and tragic awakening.
Ratings
Curator score: 9.3/10
IMDb: 8.0/10
Letterboxd: 4.21/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 97%
Metacritic: 88
TMDB: 7.5/10
Director
Louis Malle
Production
Nouvelles Éditions de Films, MK2 Films, Stella Film, N.E.F. Filmproduktion und Vertriebs (I)
Cast
Gaspard Manesse, Raphael Fejtö, Francine Racette, Stanislas Carré de Malberg, Philippe Morier-Genoud, François Berléand, François Négret, Peter Fitz, Pascal Rivet, Richard Leboeuf, Xavier Legrand, Arnaud Henriet, Jean-Sébastien Chauvin, Luc Etienne, Daniel Edinger, Ami Flammer, Irène Jacob, Jean-Paul Dubarry, Jacqueline Staup, Jacqueline Paris
Where to watch
Max
Curator Review
Verdict
A devastating, quietly controlled wartime drama about childhood friendship, moral awakening, and the cost of betrayal. Its restraint is its power: small gestures, silences, and classroom routines gradually accumulate into one of cinema’s most painful endings.
Best for
Viewers who like intimate, character-driven war films
Fans of coming-of-age stories with tragic emotional payoff
People drawn to restrained, literary filmmaking
Audiences interested in WWII stories focused on civilians and children
Skip if
You want action-heavy war spectacle
You prefer overt melodrama or constant emotional release
You need a hopeful or cathartic ending
You dislike slow-burn, observational storytelling
Overview
Au Revoir les Enfants is one of the great films about childhood innocence meeting historical horror. Louis Malle keeps the scale small and the emotions precise, letting the boarding school routines, classroom hierarchies, and private loyalties reveal the larger violence pressing in from outside.
Worth noting
What makes it so devastating is its restraint. The film never strains for tears; it trusts gesture, timing, and the fragile intensity of boys who do not yet fully understand the world that is closing around them. That makes the final movement feel not just tragic, but morally clarifying.
Bottom line
This is a war film with almost no battlefield imagery, yet it may be more harrowing than many combat dramas. It is about friendship, complicity, fear, and the moment childhood ends—not in a flourish, but in a terrible, ordinary instant.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Laura (4.5★) · 742 likes
it’s one of those films that uses restraint so perfectly, that you can feel the weight of every small moment. i don’t think i’ll get the image of julien’s hand heavily resting on his book, almost frozen, after jean shook it towards the end of the film for a long time.
trashcams (4★) · 596 likes
julien and jean were gay
chance. (5★) · 536 likes
why do they talk like that
Tom Brady (5★) · 506 likes
I feel so empty inside.
Ethan Colburn (4★) · 483 likes
Louis Malle is fast becoming one of my favorite directors. This was such a quiet and powerful movie. I don’t even want to say much because I think it’s best to go in with no prior knowledge of the story, but I will say that the ending is incredible.
The child performances are amazing as well, particularly the actor who played Julien. His moral journey in the film is mostly internal, yet his complicated feelings were never inaccessible to the… more
1970 · Drama, History · 1h 35m · R · Curator 6.3/10 (17.8K ratings) · Where to watch: Amazon Prime Video, fuboTV, MGM Plus, Philo, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
A tragic, elegant look at Jewish life under fascism and the illusion of safety before catastrophe.