''War of the Buttons'' (french: La nouvelle guerre des boutons) is a 2011 French film directed by
Christophe Barratier
Christophe Barratier (born 17 June 1963) is a French film producer, director and screenwriter, and lyricist.
Early life and education
Barratier is the son of the actress Eva Simonet and M. Barratier. He is the nephew of the film director Jacques ...
.
Plot
The story takes place in March 1944 in a small French village. The young people from the neighbouring villages of Longeverne and Velrans have been waging this merciless war as long as anyone can remember: the buttons of all the little prisoners' clothes are removed so that they head home almost naked, vanquished and humiliated. Consequently, this conflict is known as the "War of the Buttons". The village that collects the most buttons will be declared the winner. Meanwhile, Violette, a young Jewish girl, has caught the eye of Lebrac, the intelligent chief of the Longeverne kids who is coming of age, leading his gang and their rivals to consider putting aside their differences in order to protect her from the Nazis.
Cast
*
as Simone
*
Guillaume Canet
Guillaume Canet (; born 10 April 1973) is a French actor, film director and screenwriter, and show jumper.
Canet began his career in theatre and television before moving to film. He starred in several films like ''Joyeux Noël'', '' Love Me If ...
as the teacher
*
Kad Merad
Kad Merad (born Kaddour Merad, ar, قدور ميراد, link=no; 27 March 1964) is a French-Algerian filmmaker and actor who has acted both on stage and on screen.
Life and career
Kad Merad was born in Sidi Bel Abbès, Algeria, on 27 March 1 ...
as Father Lebrac
*
Gérard Jugnot
Gérard Jugnot (; born 4 May 1951) is a French actor, film director, screenwriter and film producer.
Jugnot was one of the founders of the comedy ''troupe'' Le Splendid in the 1970s, along with, among others, his high-school friends Christian Cl ...
as Father Aztec
* Jean Texier as Lebrac
*
Clément Godefroy as Petit (Little) Gibus
*
Marc-Henri Wajnberg
Marc-Henri Wajnberg is a Belgian film director born in 1953. He is also a screenwriter, an actor and the co-founder and CEO oWajnbrosse Productions
His productions are eclectic, overall he has made 2800 very short films – including the famous c ...
as Vladimir
*
Théophile Baquet as Grand (Big) Gibus
*
François Morel
François Morel (14 March 1926 – 14 January 2018) was a Canadian composer, pianist, conductor, and music educator. An associate of the Canadian Music Centre, he was made a Knight of the National Order of Quebec in 1994 and was awarded t ...
as Father Bacaillé
*
Louis Dussol as Bacaillé
*
Harold Werner as Crique
*
Nathan Parent as Camus
*
Ilona Bachelier as Violette
*
Thomas Goldberg as the Aztec
Discography
The CD soundtrack composed by
Philippe Rombi
Philippe Rombi (born 3 April 1968) is a French film score
A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film. The score comprises a number of orchestral, instrumental, or choral pieces called cues, which are timed to b ...
was released on Music Box Records label.
Reception
, the film holds a 25% approval rating on review aggregation website
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, based on 24 reviews, with an average rating of 4.82 out of 10. At
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film received an average score of 41 out of 100, based on 14 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".
References
External links
*
2011 films
French adventure films
2010s French-language films
Films directed by Christophe Barratier
Films based on French novels
Films produced by Thomas Langmann
2010s French films
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