Maybe a little bit of a spoiler topic, I'm not sure. Some critics propose the idea that the sweet girl is not merely a victim of loss, but a victim traumatized to the point of sadism. My understanding of the motivation for the burial rituals was a line spoken by the little girl suggesting that dead things needed to be buried, that they should not be left exposed to the elements. This barely articulated idea, obviously, is the result of seeing her parents killed and her carrying her dead dog. I saw no more to their "games" than burials. I did not see killings as a part of it. Is it an absolute certainty that the children kill anything more than a cockroach? I thought the owl killed the mice. Some critics don't mention any killings by the children. Others build arguments about sadism based on their observation that the kids not only buried the animals in more and more elaborate ritual, but killed some of them. I just don't recall seeing a killing.

René Clément's "Jeux Interdits" is one of those movies which are as profound as they are simple, and it couldn't work any other way. It is also one of the few films which don't shun away from letting children be children in traumatic circumstances, and their innocence determines their actions - thus bringing a shocking realization home to us. Attacked initially for all the wrong reasons and rehabilitated by now as a masterpiece, "Jeux Interdits" is a small, albeit unmissable film about the lives of small people in World War II France, searching for a thing to cling to that gives their lives meaning - and be it only the celebration of death. But how could adults even begin to understand what goes through their little heads when kids start to bury a mole, a cockroach, even the odd worm, always on the lookout for a few more extra crucifixes? Clément's portrayal of war reality is close to social realism, tragedy and even humor are all part of the film's tapestry, but the picture doesn't set out to be a sentimental tear-jerker. However, the luminous five year old Brigitte Fossey combined with Narciso Yepes' low key piano score and the deep existential themes that permeate the film make it impossible not to be affected by the pet cemetery undertaking. It's a story that owes itself to a horror premise, but it's not a Stephen King fantasy -the stakes are borrowed from a reality. Many a war film has shown us the casualties, but never in this unique form, and that's just one of the many reasons why it gets under your skin.To be avoided: The "extended" version meant for TV which embeds the happenings in a sugar sweet fairy tale frame. Luckily the alternate version remains a footnote only as the new releases respect what has been buried there in that curious French pet cemetery.

I'm still crying my eyes out after watching this thing. Usually, I hate movies with children as the main characters. This is something else entirely - a simple tale with the most powerful antiwar statement imaginable. No pretense or preachiness, the filmmakers let the message come across seemingly by default. How skillful is that? And those two children!! Have you ever seen such convincing performances from anyone? This is a heartbreaker from start to finish, but along the way it's fraught with positive insights, even glints of humor. What a remarkable achievement to make such a profoundly shattering point and disguise it as entertainment! Truly unlike anything I've ever seen. Even the abrupt ending makes perfect sense - what more can you say after all that's transpired? This film just shot to the top of my all time favorite list.

Paulette is a six-year-old blond girl who, with her parents and her little dog, are part of a stream of refugees fleeing the advancing Germans early in World War II. The crowd is bombed and strafed and Paulette wanders off, an orphan, with her dead dog in her arms.She is taken in by a family of farmers with rather rudimentary values. They're plain spoken sons of the soil and they give her a bed (over the protests of one of the sons whose blankets are being appropriated) and treat her casually as one of the family.Paulette befriends Michel, the son who is a few years older than she. He suggests they bury her dog, already in rigor. But why?, asks Paulette. Well, it keeps him out of the rain. But won't he be lonely? Well, we'll get him some company. And they begin collecting small dead animals and burying them in the secret animal cemetery they've created. But they need crosses to put on the graves. Why? Well, that's the way it's done. So they begin stealing crosses from all over the place -- including the church and the cemetery. This leads to an uproar which is resolved by the police, who show up and politely take Paulette off to an orphanage. But all Paulette wants is to return to Michel.It may sound like a tear jerker but it's rather more than that. Paulette knows nothing of death, and Michel hardly more. He mistakes the rituals -- the prayers, the icons, the graves -- for the thing behind the rituals.For that matter, the adults seem to miss the point as well. One of the older sons has been run over by a horse-drawn cart and it takes him several days to die in his bed. He's not ignored. Michel reads the newspaper to him. But his condition and his future are treated casually, as if it were an everyday, humdrum events. "Look, he's spitting up blood now. We'll have to wash the sheets." The father misses the funeral mass because he's distracted by a loose board in the floor of the hearse and is busy fixing it outside the door.And when the crosses begin to disappear, the father accuses a neighboring family of stealing them and a comic fist fight follows. In the middle of the most brutal war in human history, a war in which tens of millions will be slaughtered, two simple-minded men are battling each other over mutual accusations which are both trivial and false.I'm not certain about the end. I don't really know that Paulette has learned very much about death, it's moral significance or its utter permanence. And I don't know that Michel's view of the world is any more sophisticated. But the incongruity between these petty gripes and insect deaths on the one hand and the historical reality of their situation holds the film together.The dead little dog aside, it's a moving film.