Small Change

Small Change (L'Argent de poche, 1976) is François Truffaut's bittersweet comedy-drama, available to watch online on iFILM. The setting is the small town of Thiers, over the last warm weeks before summer break.

There's barely a plot in the usual sense. Truffaut assembles a mosaic of childhood: a boy falling for a friend's mother, a first kiss in a darkened cinema, petty thefts, prank phone calls. One toddler tumbles out of a fifth-floor window and simply gets up unhurt. Underneath all the laughter runs a darker thread — Julien, a quiet boy beaten at home, whom the adults notice far too late.

Truffaut cast mostly non-professional kids, so the camera catches reactions that feel caught rather than staged. The teacher's closing speech, about how children are more vulnerable than grown-ups care to admit, is a rare moment of the director speaking straight to the audience. Tender and clear-eyed about what childhood is actually made of. Stream Small Change online on iFILM.