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In the town of Thiers, summer of 1976, teachers and parents give their children
skills, love, and attention. A teacher has his first child, a single mother
hopes to meet Mr. Right, another mom reaches out to Patrick, a motherless lad
who is just discovering the opposite sex. Patrick befriends Julien, a new
student who lives in poverty with his mother and has a terrible secret. Bruno
shows his friends how to chat up girls. Sylvie stages a witty protest against
her parents. Brothers give a friend a haircut. A toddler falls from a window
and is unhurt. Everybody goes to the cinema. At camp, Martine catches Patrick's
eye. A teacher explains: "Life is hard, but it's wonderful."
Small Change unfolds like a poem - it's a collection of moments, thoughts and
experiences, all clustered together, adding up to a very significant outcome.
What it amounts to is the most thoughtful reflections of childhood I've ever
seen, given from the perspective of many different age groups.
The film has many scenes that are used as a vehicle to illustrate the
differences between children and adults - usually comparing the former
favorably to the latter. This is clear in a scene where a girl and her father
watch two seemingly identical goldfish swimming around in a fishbowl. "That's
Plic" says the girl. "And that's Ploc." But her father can't see the
difference. A child's superior eye for detail has rarely been so clearly
exposed on film.
Most of the vignettes are funny. Some demonstrate childhood resilience, such as
a scene where a toddler falls nine stories but is uninjured. Another shows
children's uncanny ability to make the best of a bad situation, when a girl
left alone at home thinks of an interesting way to draw attention to herself.
But among these funny episodes a more serious situation develops. The movie
slowly but sharply draws a contrast between the children who come from loving
families, and one child, a youth of about 13, who does not. Moments of this
abused child's life are also closely observed - the pain of rejection, the joy
of finding coins on the ground at an amusement park, and the innovative schemes
to get by and survive. Julien's childhood is shown as a painful period, but an
occasionally magical one nonetheless.
What is so pleasurable about viewing Small Change is its simplicity - it's
rarely a film where you constantly need to grope your mind for implications or
deeper meaning. Most of the scenes are remarkably uncluttered, just like
childhood itself.
Unbelievably, this film was rated R upon its original release, then rightfully
changed to a PG upon public outcry. A PG-13 would probably be the most
appropriate rating, but this classification wouldn't come into effect for
another 7 years. It is completely appropriate for children, but does seem
geared primarily towards adults. Because the language is quite simple, it could
also be viewed as an ideal movie in second or third year French. Not just for
fans of Truffaut, I couldn't recommend this remarkable movie more.
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