Henri Puff

A 10-year-old boy feels unwanted when his mother places him in a home for wayward children. He goes to a foster home where a family of workers finds him to be too much for them. When the unruly child discovers the family plans to give up on him, he drowns their daughter's cat in retaliation... (All Movie Guide)

Made in 1971 for French TV, this epic film comes from early in the Pialat's belated feature-filmmaking career. It begins in costume drama and an ethnographic view of rural French life during World War One, and in an apparently sentimental tale of war orphans. But then it irises out from costume drama conventions into the transcendental, exploring Pialat*s spiritual themes, as well as the social dynamics, trauma and collective experiences of war. (KG)