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Seventeen years have passed since ‘The 400 Blows’, a striking debut and an absolute pillar of the Nouvelle Vague, yet it is precisely behind him, to the adventures of Antoine Doinel, that Truffaut looks back for his latest film. Only, in this case, a different approach prevails: all the more dramatic components of The 400 Blows are stripped away, leaving behind the centrality of a horizontal plot.
The outcome of this ‘Pocket Money’ is a series of vignettes featuring children from an unspecified French town (in this case, the location is as irrelevant as ever given the universality of the themes discussed) characterized by profound tact and delicacy: the tone remains consistently calm throughout the film, even in the potentially most anxiety-inducing moment (a child left home alone climbs over the ledge and falls below, remaining unharmed), which resolves into yet another demonstration of the children's “spontaneous” forma mentis approach, which seems unreachable to us neurotic, anxious, hardened adults surrounded by thick layers of cynicism.
“Children are resilient: they bump into everything, against life, but they have a guardian angel. And besides, they have tough skin.” Thus, the teacher’s wife suitably comments on the aforementioned incident; but it is a phrase that could very well fit each of the events narrated in the film. Truffaut doesn’t refrain from portraying clever children managing to cope in situations of – for them – sudden difficulty: and so the girl left home by her parents due to a legitimate need mistaken for a whim, with a megaphone in hand, manages to mobilize an entire neighborhood to bring her a basket of food and fruit. A mockery of the adult world that often unwittingly erects barriers and is unable to manage a good line of communication.
But Truffaut is too skilled to get lost in a Manichaean dualism of “good children-bad adults”: the portrayal that emerges is varied and heterogeneous, and we observe the interactions of children and adults who are very different from one another, with small contradictions flourishing on both sides: the beneficial “cunning” mentioned earlier is not the same as that of the nomadic boy, ingenious indeed in executing small thefts but never painted as a positive example; the seed must also be sought here in a much more sinister context of growth that will find its resolution in the finale. In short, what Truffaut wants to say in the end is that children cannot do without a healthy education and a loving relationship that they must necessarily establish with adults: what must be strived for is an ideal compromise where attachment doesn’t become suffocation, allowing today’s little ones to adequately temper themselves for the life they'll face in a future less distant than they might think.
It is precisely the school teacher who is the “typical” positive and understanding adult of the film (an ideal counterpoint to the severe and closed instructor of The 400 Blows) to whom Truffaut entrusts his precious message, enriched with a clear jab at political institutions (a jab that, why not, is also relevant): if children were voters and could vote, politicians would give them more attention. Truffaut seems to tell us that what is “currently” being done is never enough, and it is fully within our powers to push even further and ensure greater protection and services.
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