Forbidden Games

The messages come easily; the movie is never hectoring or doleful. The director's touch is light, his eye for the ways of farm folk and of children is sharp, and his heart is soft.

With its mixture of tones, its multiple plot focuses and its singular use of the virtuosity of Spanish guitarist Narciso Yepes on the soundtrack, it is very much its own film.

The movie is clearly not interested in sugarcoating or sentimentalizing WWII, even though Clment has every opportunity to do so.

[It] has gone from the exemplar of what expressive narrative filmmaking could be to something more elegiac: This is what it now rarely even dares aspire to.

It's difficult to fault a film that scrutinizes the veracity of childhood with such clarity.

Summary is inadequate to convey anything but the general conception, surely the most extraordinary blend of tragedy and ferocious comedy ever achieved in the history of film-making.

Perhaps not until Ponette in 1996 had another movie looked so closely at how death might be absorbed through the eyes of a small child.

[If] we like to view childhood as if it were a mirror reflecting an image of us that is purged of all sin [and] restored to innocence, then Forbidden Games refuses to play along -- not out of cruelty or pessimism, but out of a desire to tell the truth.

The two stars, Brigette Fossey and Georges Poujouly, manage to be natural, comic, and utterly moving in a hair-raising way without even trying. You should see this film, even at art-theater prices.

Forbidden Games is a truly stunning work, filled with a gentle humor that suddenly catches in your throat, and an insightful, penetrating gaze that is, nonetheless, generous.