The longing for a family was the main subject of Gerard Blain's work ;if the hero was abandoned by his parents ("les amis" ) ,he searched for a soulmate ,even though the
society did not approve of a gay relationship (it was the early seventies) .
Some found some anti-gay feeling in "le rebelle" ; but Blain ,in his very first movie I mention above, depicted a moving beautiful gay affair between a forty-something and a young man rejected by his mom "who thinks that's it's too bad he's not eighteen , the army would knock him into shape "; on the contrary, in "un enfant dans la foule ", the hero had homosexual relations to feed his family in the Occupation days when the Parisians were starving .
Beaufils (excellent Michel Subor ,a professional actor , they are rare in Bresson-influenced Blain's movies ) is a smug bourgeois : he thinks that his money can buy everything and he 's got a crush on Pierre , a prole who needs a work : he can provide him with a steady job in return for sexual relations ; actually sexual exploitation has often been treated , but generally it concerns girls ;it does not make a big difference .Blain does not blame homosexuality,he condemns dough which allows a despicable bourgeois to treat a human being as a prostitute. Here ,"le beau serge" beats his former director ,Claude Chabrol , at his own game.
PIerre is a rebel against the entire society ; he's not even a revolutionary angry young man,he's beyond that ;he does not believe in the communist blah blah blah anymore , he does not want to work for a song , to be exploited by the wealthy ; and the history professor,who asks for a radical solution, finally reveals himself a coward , probably a future champagne socialist when he gets older ( the left wing would come to power the following year ).
But there's Nathalie ,his sister; now that their father who died some years back (he fell from a scaffolding )and their mom (who died in the hospital without being able to kiss her children farewell at the beginning of the film) left them two orphans ,they stand in danger to be separated: the social worker insists the fourteen-year girl be sent to a community home ,unless her brother can take care of her -which he does anyway,and in an infinitely tender way - , which means to find a steady job .
The relationship the siblings have is deeply moving, now harrowing when Pierre runs behind the train, now all the more endearing when they walk along the sea ,enjoy French fries and a movie show ,since one knows that these happy times will be short-lived ,and probably never return. This is pure ,true love and affection; Nathalie suggests he move to Calais where she lives in the community home ,so he can visit her more often :but it's already too late.
Blain's treatment is stripped of embellishment ; when the children arrive to the hospital,to find their mother gone, a nurse pulls the sheet over her face ,and the girl falls into her brother's arm : the only noise one hears is the creaking of the wheels as they take the dead away to the morgue .
This is a desperate movie, from a tormented soul who gave some of the most important French movies of the last three decades of the twentieth century ,but remained unsung ; I would recommend it to people with a strong heart : under this Bressonesque atmosphere , a deadly hatred is looming.
