But where are the pigs, cows, churches, country, war, the history of France etc. ?

In rural France between the wars (1871 - 1914) described with passion by the great author Louis Pergaud (died in battle in 1915) two rival gangs confront children, defending the legitimacy of their territories. Alsace and Lorraine amputated by the previous war is on everyone's mind. 1912, publication date of The War of the Buttons announces the storms of the coming war. How to take a step back with the event, the play down, depoliticize, bring it back to a quarrel with steeples (Velrans against Longeverne) without issue finally a series of battles between kids, after all, fairly innocuous; this is how the author leads his readers on the vast territory of delighted laughter. When in addition, child, I had the joy of knowing such battles, fierce, merciless, where alliances were strategic and controlled by the loyalty and honor and treachery severely punished, the work of Louis has Pergaud marked forever my mind. The cinematic translation of the latter therefore represents a great challenge that has really risen to Christophe Barratier.

The film is gentillet Barratier, funny, describing a bucolic countryside, located somewhere in rural Auvergne. Yet cows, pigs, farm work, the viewer will be spared. In effect he sees in Paris? At best can it meet the Agricultural Show once a year; but these animals are held and can not live in nature ... Beyond the story, the director exposes the eyes of all his ignorance of Louis Pergaud, writer so attached to the land, to the animals as we know it in the delicate work of animal tales Goupil De Margot and the sociological, The Romance of hunting dog Miraut.

Another oddity. The historical context is at the end of the Second World War. Achtung! We will pass a truck of German soldiers risking surprise Velrans kids busy painting a provocation on the walls of the village. For this, the Resistance were arrested, shot, deported. Here, the danger is evoked with lightness. The spectator today, disregarding the Second World War, will take it at face value as it will also take two historical enormities, that border correctional revisionism:

1 / the policeman who investigates the behavior "disorder" of the teacher (Guillaume Canet) because it resists the arrest of a family - the militiaman asked the mayor, marechalist obviously, if the teacher was not left; implying that huge historical lie: that was left was mandatory in the Resistance! See my review of Simon Epstein book: A French paradox: anti-racism in the Collaboration, anti-Semitic in the Resistance. In no event being left meant being the Resistance! This is false, untrue. If being more predisposed communist resistance (see Army of Crime) be left or socialist radical really not predisposed. 12 of the 17 SFIO ministers from the end of the Third Republic were expelled from the party after the war for their behavior during collaborator. Edouard Herriot was an archetype of cowardice during the war. Resistant from the left profoundly marked the CNR; I think of Jean Moulin: The policy, the rebel, the strong and Pierre Brossolette, but also to Gaston Deferre (Brutus Network) - CNR whose mind is betrayed by the current left (PS).

2 / The son of the Mayor, loose, cried "Long live the King!" ; again, revisionism is not far; cf. The royalists in the François Marin Fleutot resistance in addition to the aforementioned work of Epstein. If Maurras, head of the French Action, royalist movement was marechalist, it was not, however collaborator (even if the wire is thin) - Political attitude fought my family, a little south of the Auvergne, in Ardèche, the arms in hand, protecting the Jews, leading a network of escape Jews for example.

3 / How can you believe for one moment that a handful of people could dictate to the militia threatening to the skin of the militia after the war (the landing did not take place !!!). Lying, the revision is added the easy morality of right-thinking: it was so simple to protect Jews during the war! So why so few French have they done? Ashamed! Read Dieulefit or the miracle of silence, stars Lyrics: Memory hidden children (1939-1945).

The history review ignores the physical corrections children, though described with terror, by kids sanction nonsense they have committed. Poverty reigned. The buttons were worth much. Degrade her clothing was intolerable. Back stripped naked misery in this constituted a breach of multiple social codes, really not translated in this stupid movie.

In short, gentillet movie, hollow in the message, lying on history. Two stars is finally note that imposes itself (I was considering three initially).