This is a series of about 20 vignettes about children in a class in a small French town in the 1970's. Five or six of the vignettes are quite nice, but the remainder don't seem to have much substance or make points that may have been easy to decipher by a French audience back then, but is now difficult to understand. This is slightly better than Truffaut's 400 Blows, which I found quite overrated, but not nearly as good as "the Wild Child." The problem is that one is looking for the connection between the vignettes, and although, occasionally, some characters do link up, each episode is really self-contained. Truffaut is distancing us from his subjects, the children. He is almost presenting this as a sociological study of the world of children. Yet, there is no real thesis to take from the movie. What about children is Truffaut trying to say? Or is he trying for some kind of objectivity and not worrying if the material ends up saying nothing? Again, there are some nice moments, (the flying child and the make-out scene in the cinema are my favorite), so see the movie. I just did not find it as engrossing as many other Truffaut films.
Review of Small Change
