Heiners Filmseiten – Messieurs les enfants (en)

Messieurs les enfants

German title: Messieurs les enfants (Die Herren Buben)
Spain title: Señores Niños
Russian title: Господа младенцы
Original title: Messieurs les enfants

Alternative titles:
Große Kinder, kleine Eltern

Comedy – France
Production year: 1996
Movie length: 100 minutes

Director: Pierre Boutron
Writer: Pierre Boutron, Daniel Pennac
Cinematograph: François Catonné
Music: Jean-Claude Petit

Movie description:

To punish three troublemakers, Albert Castraing, their French teacher, gives them an essay to do, in which they must imagine what their lives would be if they were suddenly transformed into adults. The next morning, the three twelve-year-old boys realise to their amazement that... they have been transformed into adults! As for they parents they have become... Kids! It is the beginning of a series of mishaps for Joseph, a Jew, Igor, a catholic and Nourdine, an ArabÂ ...

Solemn French schoolteacher Albert Crastaing punishes a trio of 12-year-olds by having them write a Kafkaesque essay with a body-switching premise, cueing the film’s storyline of kids transformed into their parents. Nouredine is a French-born Arab whose father is an artist forced to drive a cab. Catholic Igor’s father died from AIDS after a blood transfusion. Joseph is a Jew whose father is a cranky and irritable tailor. The trio encounters a prostitute, Yolande. Elsewhere, the parents inhabit bodies of their children and experience problems kids face daily.

Boy Actors