The Wild Child

My first inclination is to say "That's it?". But on reflection, there is a calculated simplicity about the film that works in its favor. Truffaut presents the story with such a lack of drama and pretension that it becomes almost a documentary. Maybe his aim was to make a true neo-realist film, since most of the classics of De Sica, Rossellini, and Visconti are impure in the sense that they incorporate melodrama into the mise-en-scene and writing. Along with the overwhelming majority of film critics since the French New Wave, I tend to believe that absolute realism (as if it were even possible), is not necessarily the best goal in narrative filmmaking.
However, this film is about science. It seeks to replicate an experiment in which a cultured middle-class doctor attempts to acclimate a feral kid to society. In that sense, it succeeds, and there is a subtle catharsis in the final scene that defies its humble presentation. Not quite what I expected from the director of intensely dramatic films like Jules and Jim and Two English Girls, but a wonderful departure nonetheless.