It casts a fresh, vigorous and unclouded eye on adolescence as it really is rather than as we would like it to be.

The theme is treated with faultless discretion and taste, without the smallest nod to current sensationalism.

Malle, as I see it, is saying: to understand today you must appreciate yesterday. The more I think about it the more encouraging and enlightening this appears.

It's an enormously entertaining picture, presumably the gentlest and most endearing movie ever made about a boy who has sex with his mother.