In 1987, Louis Malle, after a run of American produced films that worked (My Dinner With Andre, Atlantic City) and failed (Pretty Baby, Crackers), decided to return to his roots and write and produce a small budget French film, Au Revoir Les Enfants (Goodbye, Children) about a supposedly true experience he had as a child, in Vichy France, toward the end of World War Two, at a privileged French boarding school.

Although Malle has always claimed the incident to be true, despite changing details of it in re-tellings, and dramatically for the screen, while others have claimed he was simply telling a good story, neither claim’s veracity nor lack has a thing to do with whether or not the story and film work as standalone works of art. They do, but not nearly as well as the film’s greatest champions insist.

The tale is rather simple. In the winter of 1943-44 (December and January) the Malle stand-in character, a twelve-year-old boy, befriends one of four Jewish boys allowed by a Roman Catholic headmaster to stay at the private school, to save their lives. Their friendship is slow but realistic in budding. Then the Gestapo comes to the school, and rounds up the Jewish boys, save one who escapes, and the headmaster, Father Jean (Philippe Morier-Genoud). The final shot is of the Malle stand-in watching his friend, and the others, being carted off to the death camps, as the school is closed, and Malle, in voiceover, reveals their fates.

Those are the basics, now on to the particulars. The visuals of the film, by cinematographer Renato Berta, are excellent. One gets a real sense of place, especially in night scenes, when the two boys - the Malle stand-in, Julien Quentin (Gaspard Manesse), a pensive mama’s boy, and the Jewish boy, Jean Bonnet née Kippelstein (Raphaël Fejtö) - get lost in the woods.

The score is fine, understated and not too melodramatic, and the acting is superb, especially by the younger boys, who were not trained actors. This lack of training heightens the fear and pensiveness that such a time likely left on most surviving children.

The problem lies in Malle’s script. As a ‘coming of age’ film, it works, and feels a bit like the film The Cider House Rules, in look, tone, and pacing. As a ‘Holocaust’ film, it is more akin to subtler political works, like Roman Polanski’s The Pianist, and also succeeds, as it mutes overt ideology to focus on character and ‘moments.’ But it works on those levels alone. There is something that does not cohere the two as well. Yes, the themes of guilt, childhood cruelty, betrayal, nationalism, social class warfare, and religion all get their moments as well, but they seem mostly obligatory, despite their good presentation, therefore come and go with little dramatic nor emotional impact.