Allons z'enfants (1981)
Directed by Yves Boisset

Film Review

Allons z'enfants is a moving yet understated adaptation of Yves Gibeau's controversial 1952 novel of the same title.  With uncompromising frankness, the film explores one of the most troubling aspects of the French education system of the 1930s - the military school system into which survivors of the First World War were all too eager to offload their offspring, creating as they did so more human cannon fodder for the next war.   For many adolescent young men this must have been a harrowing ordeal, and this film manages to reflect this by depicting the struggle of teenager Simon Chalumot to survive this experience.

Despite the icily alluring photography, this is not an easy film to watch.  What is particularly upsetting is that whenever Chalumot appears to find tenderness or hope, that lifeline is soon wrenched out of his grasp.   Yet the character Chalumot is no cringing coward and he displays bravery which puts his military overlords to shame. In his first big screen role, 19-year-old Lucax Belvaux plays Chalumot with charm and conviction. Two decades on, Belvaux would not only be well-regarded as an actor, he would also be an accomplished filmmaker, widely praised for such films as his famous Trilogie (2002) and kidnapping drama Rapt (2009).

Much of Yves Boisset's cinema is uncompromisingly bleak - consider his Algerian War exposé R.A.S. (1973) (which ran the gauntlet of state-controlled censorship) and his stridently anti-racist Dupont-Lajoie (1975), which depicted both a rape and a lynching. Allons z'enfants is, like much of Boisset's work, intended to shock so that we may share his sense of moral outrage or at least become more aware of the injustices that blight our world. The film's shock ending may appear a tad contrived but it compels us to reflect on our moral obligation to the young - it is our duty to guide and develop our children, not shape them to fight our wars.

Film Synopsis

In 1935, Simon Chalumot is just 13 years old when he is entered into a strict military school by his father, a patriotic veteran of the previous war.  A timid boy, Simon has no apparent enthusiasm or aptitude for becoming a soldier, and this leads him to be bullied by both the staff at the school and his fellow pupils. Two years later, he runs away but is soon recaptured and returned to the school by his father, who is determined that his son shall follow in his footsteps and have a distinguished military career.  Not long afterwards, Simon moves to a more senior military academy, but the bullying and the abuse continues. In the end, he finds he can take no more...