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Title: War of the Buttons (2011)
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| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
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Jean Texier | ... | Lebrac |
| Ilona Bachelier | ... | Violette | |
| Clément Godefroy | ... | Petit Gibus | |
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Théophile Baquet | ... | Grand Gibus |
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Louis Dussol | ... | Bacaillé - Mayor's Kid |
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Harold Werner | ... | La Crique - Smart Kid |
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Nathan Parent | ... | Camus |
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Thomas Goldberg | ... | L'Aztec |
| Laetitia Casta | ... | Simone | |
| Guillaume Canet | ... | Paul, L'instituteur (the teacher) | |
| Kad Merad | ... | Le père Lebrac | |
| Gérard Jugnot | ... | Le père L'Aztec | |
| Marie Bunel | ... | La mère Lebrac | |
| François Morel | ... | Le père Bacaillé, Mayor | |
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Grégory Gatignol | ... | Brochard |
Occupied France; Lebrac leads a play war between two rival kid gangs, but a girl he likes, who's Jewish, is in danger of being discovered by local Nazi sympathisers. Lebrac and the village must now respond to the reality of what's happening.
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50 years after Yves Robert's famous version which was successful but was carefully kept "suitable for all audiences" and thus avoided Pergaud's Rabelaisian style .
Louis Pergaud is barely mentioned in the cast and credits ,the "screenwriters" taking the lion's share ;it must be said that the book has undergone lots of changes as Robert did in the early sixties:but whereas Robert transposed the action to his era,this new version chose the end of WW2,with its resistant fighters,the collaborators and traitors,the Jews protected by the Justs.It allows a parallel between the buttons war and the "real" war which is somewhat artificial though (who has not guessed the truth about the nice schoolteacher -played by talented Canet-? about Violette?)Pergaud's novel was written in 1913,and the writer died in the war that was about to break out.
The children remain true to form,particularly the young actor who plays Lebrac ,in love with Violette (who replaces the female character of the book ,La Marie-Tintin ,not always with good results : sometimes it flounders in the intellectual girl/boy dunce cliché ) who ,like Anne Frank ,writes a diary;Petit Gibus is funny ,although perhaps not as much as that of Yves Robert.
This is pleasant to watch ,but full of WW2 clichés and ,as far as the forthrightness of the language is concerned,not an improvement on its predecessor;I personally would take this black and white priceless early version any day.