So much average

Let's be realistic.

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

June 1950, the parents of a five-year-old girl Paulette (Fossey) are killed in a sudden strafe as they are fleeing from Paris during the Fall of France, death befalls her so wantonly, even her puppy cannot survive it. Then Paulette runs into Michel Dollé (Poujouly), a boy slightly older than her, who brings her to their rural home, a household of eight, the Dollé family takes her in, despite of the wartime difficulties.Paulette has a new home, but she is shell-shocked, what the hell can a little girl do to process the after-effects of death at such an innocent age? Director René Clément's Golden Lion champion pluckily grapples with this delicate matter in question postulated by François Boyer's source novel, it is more complex than a deviant orbit caused by children's innocence loss or juvenile blind faith (the latter would get a nice exploration in Bryan Forbes' WHISTLE DOWN THE WIND 1961). Paulette becomes fixated on the ritual after death ever since she tries digging a hole to bury her dead puppy and proffering something more orthodox to ensure a solemn promise of rest-in-peace, one thing after another, she needs other dead animals to be interred nearby for company, with Michel gladly offering his helping hand, their "pet cemetery" project goes rather smoothly, the last thing they need is crosses, and there is only one place can meet their requirement - the church cemetery.Does it sound morbid? On paper, yes, the psychological transference of a child's unhealthy obsession, which trespasses innocence and is fomented by the underdeveloped intelligence, can be reckoned as a fervent anti-war manifesto, children should never be afflicted with the cruelty of war, at any rate, that lies the meat of the film's enduring value and universal cachet. A sharp reference can be traced from the depiction of the feud between the Dollés and their neighbor, the Gouards, men are innately belligerent, and the film also shows that how shockingly easy to catalyze hostility into action even by blatant lies.Clément's spanking execution guile-fully hedges around most of the animal cruelty - save the unfortunate fate of Paulette's fox terrier, and the film itself is an absolute marvel, organically endearing and enormously poignant, Fossey and Poujouly are plain wunderkinds in front of camera, both in their first screen roles, completely tug at audience's heartstrings, in particular, their respective final scenes. It is a boy's rite-of-passage to face the vagaries of the adult world versus a girl's new chapter with her abruptly orphaned identity which chanciness beckons. But on a brighter side, love is cherished and celebrated in its purest form. Narciso Yepes' pellucid score turns mellow and romantic whenever the two kids are in the same frame, including the ear-worm takeaway, the guitar piece ROMANCE.Clément also garnishes the two leads with a rosary of subplots about the adults, each member of the Dollés is allotted with economic but well-crafted quota to reveal an authentic immediacy of life under that particular cloud, anxiety, dissatisfaction, sexual awakening and increasingly religiously dependent. To put it in a simple sentence, FORBIDDEN GAMES is a chef-d'oeuvre and one of the most important movies every human being on earth needs to watch and be affected, stunned and amazed!

With an intriguing title like "Forbidden Games", I certainly would have hoped that this 1952, foreign film would have proved to be a bit more interesting than it was.This was one of those films that seemed to be specifically aimed at a mature, adult audience, yet its story was so intensely focused on the activities of 2 children that it repeatedly had me wondering what the hell the point was that director Rene Clement was trying to get across to me here.Set in the year 1940 (during Germany's occupation of France in WW2) - Forbidden Games was not only some of the driest, mundane and unimaginative storytelling that I've seen in quite some time - But the incessant spotlight that its story shone onto the subject of religion seriously began to grate on my nerves like you wouldn't believe.It truly amazes me that this nothing-of-a-movie actually won an Oscar for "Best Foreign Film" of that particular year.

Maybe a little bit of a spoiler topic, I'm not sure. Some critics propose the idea that the sweet girl is not merely a victim of loss, but a victim traumatized to the point of sadism. My understanding of the motivation for the burial rituals was a line spoken by the little girl suggesting that dead things needed to be buried, that they should not be left exposed to the elements. This barely articulated idea, obviously, is the result of seeing her parents killed and her carrying her dead dog. I saw no more to their "games" than burials. I did not see killings as a part of it. Is it an absolute certainty that the children kill anything more than a cockroach? I thought the owl killed the mice. Some critics don't mention any killings by the children. Others build arguments about sadism based on their observation that the kids not only buried the animals in more and more elaborate ritual, but killed some of them. I just don't recall seeing a killing.

Paulette is a six-year-old blond girl who, with her parents and her little dog, are part of a stream of refugees fleeing the advancing Germans early in World War II. The crowd is bombed and strafed and Paulette wanders off, an orphan, with her dead dog in her arms.She is taken in by a family of farmers with rather rudimentary values. They're plain spoken sons of the soil and they give her a bed (over the protests of one of the sons whose blankets are being appropriated) and treat her casually as one of the family.Paulette befriends Michel, the son who is a few years older than she. He suggests they bury her dog, already in rigor. But why?, asks Paulette. Well, it keeps him out of the rain. But won't he be lonely? Well, we'll get him some company. And they begin collecting small dead animals and burying them in the secret animal cemetery they've created. But they need crosses to put on the graves. Why? Well, that's the way it's done. So they begin stealing crosses from all over the place -- including the church and the cemetery. This leads to an uproar which is resolved by the police, who show up and politely take Paulette off to an orphanage. But all Paulette wants is to return to Michel.It may sound like a tear jerker but it's rather more than that. Paulette knows nothing of death, and Michel hardly more. He mistakes the rituals -- the prayers, the icons, the graves -- for the thing behind the rituals.For that matter, the adults seem to miss the point as well. One of the older sons has been run over by a horse-drawn cart and it takes him several days to die in his bed. He's not ignored. Michel reads the newspaper to him. But his condition and his future are treated casually, as if it were an everyday, humdrum events. "Look, he's spitting up blood now. We'll have to wash the sheets." The father misses the funeral mass because he's distracted by a loose board in the floor of the hearse and is busy fixing it outside the door.And when the crosses begin to disappear, the father accuses a neighboring family of stealing them and a comic fist fight follows. In the middle of the most brutal war in human history, a war in which tens of millions will be slaughtered, two simple-minded men are battling each other over mutual accusations which are both trivial and false.I'm not certain about the end. I don't really know that Paulette has learned very much about death, it's moral significance or its utter permanence. And I don't know that Michel's view of the world is any more sophisticated. But the incongruity between these petty gripes and insect deaths on the one hand and the historical reality of their situation holds the film together.The dead little dog aside, it's a moving film.