L' Argent de Poche [Small Change] (17 march 1976)
directed by François Truffaut
starring Georges Desmouceaux, Fhilippe Goldmann, Nicole Félix, Chantal Mercier, Jean-François Stévenin, Virginie Thévenet, Tania Torrens, René Barnerias, Katy Carayon, Jean-Marie Carayon, Francis Devlaeminck, Laurent Devlaeminck, Eva Truffaut
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MPAA rating: Studio: Les Films du Carrosse, Les Productions Artistes Associés Script: François Truffaut, Suzanne Schiffman Music: Maurice Jaubert Running time: 104 minutes Tags: 1970s; child abuse; Comedy; Drama; first love; Foreign Film; schools Tactical strength: [7/10]
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With L'Argent de Poche, writer and director François Truffaut returns to filming a classroom full of children as he did in Les Quatre Cents Coups. In this case, Truffaut doesn't follow a specific child, but rather seems to make a commentary on childhood by following the exploits of several of the children in the town of Thiers.
Truffaut seems to emphasize that adults need to remember their own childhood and put the actions of their children in perspective. As an audience, we easily find most of the situations funny or touching, but we see the parents in these situations overreact to their children's behaviors. Two particular stories emphasize this point of view. Young Sylvie (Sylvie Grezel) wants to take her rabbit-fur purse to the restaurant, but her parents won't allow the dirty purse out in public. The parents try to ploy Sylvie by offering her one of her mother's old purses, but when Sylvie refuses to accept the replacement, she gets left at home. As soon as her parents have left, Sylvie takes her father's megaphone (he works as a police inspector), and announces to the apartment courtyard that her parents have left her alone and that she is hungry. The neighbors laugh at the situation, and one family arranges to lower her food in a basket.
In another scene, young Richard (Richard Golfier) has some money to get a haircut. In a scheme to keep the pocket money, Richard has two of his friends cut his hair instead. Of course, Richard hair looks abominable, and his father has a fit. Monsieur Golfier (Christian Lentretien) drags Richard to the hair salon and starts making all sorts of accusations. The barber (Francis Devlaeminck) fixes Richard's hair at no charge "as a service to the profession."
In the scenes with Sylvie, we see that her parents make a decision to leave her alone based on fear of embarrassment. Who would really care if a child carried a dirty rabbit-fur purse to a restaurant? In the scenes with Richard, we see that children make silly decisions based on not having enough experience to see the full consequences of their actions. And yet, in a speech by the schoolteacher (Jean-François Stévenin), Truffaut seems to advocate for children's suffrage with arguments that schools would have much better funding if politicians had to cater to the votes of children. The speech also praises the state for taking an abused child away from his parents and placing him in a foster home, so the speech doesn't necessarily put the state down entirely as much as point out problems with the funding of education. (And what teacher doesn't believe the state underfunds education.)
This single speech actually lowered my overall opinion of the film. Up to the point of the speech, we see honest depictions of childhood by non-professional actors from the French town of Thiers. We see children going about their everyday routines: going to school, getting into trouble after school, going to the movies, starting to hit on girls. Although Jean-François' speech deals with material that comments on the events in the film, it goes on too long and introduces subjects don't really belong in a homage to childhood. His wife (Virginie Thévenet) puts the theme of the movie in much better and simpler terms: "Children exist in a state of grace. They pass untouched through dangers that would destroy an adult."
