Was pleasantly surprised to see this refrain from the structure you'd expect from this kind of film, the classic "person hates marginalized group(s) until he gets to know (one of) them" you see in, for example, American History X. No, this finds its conclusion in the grey, where a deeply prejudiced man might still be just that at the end, but no one would disagree he changed for the better. Instead of tension building up because of the kid concealing his true identity, bound to be unmasked, he cleverly turns the old man's antisemitic notions against him. It makes for a much more engaging plot than I find a lot of these other 60's French drama's to be, that are so infatuated with being as miserable as can be that they just completely lose me. It's not exempt from all the issues of its contemporaries, though: there's a lot of plot-meandering (that I seem to mind even more in French cinema) and I found most of this to be technically and formally uninspired. Also, it really sucks to be an animal in one of these.
Review of The Two of Us
