Such a frustrating disappointment

Good movie but grossly overrated

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

"Les mistons" is a movie by famous French director Francois Truffaut that was made over 55 years ago back when he was still fairly young an in the early stages of his career. Same can be said about the actors as well. For Bernadette Lafont, it was the very first acting role, while Blain acted before already. I guess she was mostly cast because she was also Blain's girlfriend/wife the year this was made and it was the beginning of a prolific career. She garnered final acclaim for her role as Paulette 3 years ago before her death in 2013.This black-and-white film is a typical example of Truffaut's early work. Really little happens, even for a running time of only 17 minutes. Basically the narrator is grown up now and tells us about when he was a boy and he and his pals constantly kept getting on the nerves of a young couple. They do pranks etc., but as not unusual for Truffaut there is a dark twist at the end which probably made this childhood memory so precious to the narrator. I personally prefer "Antoine et Colette", but this one here is not a bad watch either. Nicely atmospheric and really elevated by the ending.

Les Mistons displays Francois Truffaut's special gifts as a filmmaker in a nice shot of 18 minutes in Les Mistons, as he works with children, and a love story with the young. While the story is simple- five kids who've barely had their voices crack follow a young woman, Bernadette, who becomes their envy when she's dating Gerard- the execution is quite intelligent and involving. Before the 400 Blows and Breathless knocked around the streets of Paris for locations, Les Mistons shows their characters all over the place, in the woods, in the streets, on bridges, and even inside a rustic looking stadium of shorts (I loved these scenes, with their high angles and timing). And the children have a very, very realistic feeling to them, as this is indeed what kids their age do, if they have no technology or attention span. There's even a small kind of Cocteau quality to some of their scenes, like when they are play-firing guns at each other, or hatching their 'vicious' games against the love-birds.It also helps a good deal that the actress playing Bernadette is incredibly pretty, practically without trying, though it's not to say that Truffaut doesn't get some quixotic shots of her playing tennis or riding her bike. But it is without some doubt that the story will end with some tragedy, or at least some revelation of this double-sided way about youth, both for the invigorated like the kids or for the seemingly life-long blissful partners of Bernadette and Gerard. It contains the light quality of all of Truffaut's films, and while there isn't enough time to really get to know these kids or Bernadette (though for the latter it's better to have the mysterious, almost no-dialog quality about her), it works wonderfully- one of my favorite short films.

While some on IMDb scored this short film higher, I find it really hard to give it a score one way or the other since Les Mistons is only 17 minutes long. It's sort of an experimental film due to its length and it's about as long as the average 3 Stooges short (this is NOT meant as a criticism--just a statement about the length of the film). What I saw, I really liked. It's a real shame that Trufaut never expanded this movie or created more episodes on "The Brats" ("Mistons" in French)--I could see several vignettes like this going to create a nice film.I assume if the viewer has no idea who Truffaut is or had no idea it was one of his films wouldn't think too much about it. It's a slight little film. Enjoyable, but not a "must see".

One of the best moments in the great short comes when Truffaut pays homage to/rips off the Lumiere short L'arroseur Arrose, involving one of the "mistons" stepping on a gardener's hose, causing him to get squirted in the face. Truffaut is acknowledging the French film heritage he will have to respect and continue, and he seems to have done pretty nicely. The short was recently put on video with another wonderful short, Antoine & Colette, which continues the adventures of Antoine Doinel a few years after The 400 Blows, as he falls and fails in love. The tape/DVD is worth seeking out