L'Argent de Poche

That critics hailed Truffaut's film about children as 'delightful' and 'enchanting' is a fair indication of its gross sentimentality. An initial sequence showing pupils arriving for school in a small French provincial town serves as the linking device for a series of unrelated episodes involving individual children and their families, ranging from the inconsequential to the downright mawkish. There's not a snotty nose in sight, just endless well-scrubbed faces into whose mouths Truffaut frequently puts lines of quite nauseating cuteness: 'Gregory went BOOM!' burbles the toddler who has fallen - unscathed, alas - from a ninth floor window. And most winsome of all is Julien (Goldmann), the doe-eyed welfare case whom a school medical reveals to have been beaten up by his parents: presumably this film's intended audience would have difficulty feeling sorry for an unattractive child.