Irish Film Institute -L’ENFANCE NUE

L’ENFANCE NUE

Director: MAURICE PIALAT

83 minutes| France| 1968| Subtitled| Colour| 35mm


(Prix Jean Vigo 1969)
First-time actor Michel Terrazon plays the young François, a provincial orphan whose destructive behaviour precipitates his relocation from the home of a long-term foster family to the care of a benevolent elderly couple. In the course of this transition, Pialat’s film presents the turbulence of François’ unmoored existence, and his explosive reactions to the contradictory emotions it engenders.

This is the portrait of a lost youth‚ and an entire society’s dysfunction, before the moment of reconciliation. While comparisons with François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows are almost inevitable, both in terms of content and also because Truffaut co-produced L’Enfance nue, Pialat’s unconventional style here takes a far more realist line, using non-professional actors and much cruder editing and photography. It remains one of Pialat’s finest works.

FRENCH FILM CLUB. IFI and Alliance Française members can avail of a special discounted ticket price of €7 for this screening.<

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