Small Change

A provincial town in France, the last term of the school year. The film follows the days of a class and the children around it. One boy is looking for money to go to the cinema, two brothers wait for their father to wake, a baby falls from a window, a boy comes to class with his hair cut for the first time, a pupil falls in love with his teacher. Among them is Julien: he speaks to nobody, comes in dirty, and nobody has been to his house. François Truffaut directs. The film was built by working with the children; Truffaut changed the script according to what they said and some scenes came out of improvisation. The narrative is episodic; there is no single plot and most sections run a few minutes. The strand with Julien is its centre of gravity. The narrative does not show the abuse of a child directly but shows the consequences, and the teacher's speech to the class becomes its thesis: children have no rights because they cannot vote. Truffaut's first film was also about a neglected child, and this returns to that matter twenty years later; the tone of the two is entirely different. The scene of the baby falling from the window is the best known passage and is built as comedy. Who it is for: viewers who like Truffaut and films about children. Who it is not for: the structure is scattered, there is no plot, and the speech at the end is openly a statement.