The Children

Ernesto is a boy of seven with the body of a man of thirty. On his first day at school he makes a decision: he will not go again. His reason is plain; he does not want to be taught things he does not know. That decision turns the household and the school against him at once. The film builds this logic not as a joke but as an objection to be taken seriously. How knowledge is passed on, and by whose leave, is the real subject. The account holds comedy and a philosophical essay in the same place. Marguerite Duras’s own language decides the form of the film. Axel Bogousslavsky and Daniel Gélin appear in the ninety four minute French film, completed in 1985.