Schwellenjahre

Pierre Boutron has essentially worked for TV ,but he has made a handful of theatrically released efforts,this one probably considered the best ,at least the most popular.

Victor got a raw deal:his parents were victims of the Vel'D'Hiv roundup,and he had to flee France ;in 1947,back in Paris,the young Jew is taken in by a secondhand goods dealer who becomes a true father to him;he also makes friend with a rich teenager his age .

It's a depiction of those "sandwich years " ,the transition from childhood to adolescence in a suburban milieu ,with its small dealings;Victor will discover that ,whereas children make no distinction between social classes,grownups-here represented by uncle Jean -do.

Good acting by Wojtek Psoniak as the grumpy junk dealer and Claude Berri's son Thomas Langmann.(Shades of Claude Berri's and Michel Simon's "Le Vieil Homme Et L'Enfant (1966))

The film begins and ends with a flash-forward: an anti-Semitic attack,in the contemporary years (the eighties).