Summary
We see Antoine handing over his belongings to a jail warden. He signs a document and a guard brings him to his cell. The scene shifts and we see Antoine lying on a cot, staring at the ceiling. He eventually falls asleep. A little later, he hears banging on his cell and goes to investigate. A man hands him a beverage, which he takes a sip of, before spitting out and throwing on the ground. Antoine rolls a cigarette up in newspaper scraps and smokes it with a match he lights on his shoe. He lies back on his bed and smokes. We see him getting his mugshot taken.
The scene shifts abruptly to Mrs. Doinel talking to a judge, telling him that they would take Antoine back into their home if it could be proven that Antoine had changed considerably. “If only you could scare some sense into him, Your Honor,” she says. The judge suggests, “Perhaps you exercise control too inconsistently,” reminding Mrs. Doinel of a time that Antoine was left home alone for an entire weekend. The judge asks what Antoine’s father thinks of it all, and Mrs. Doinel tells him that Mr. Doinel isn’t Antoine’s father, but a man who married her when Antoine was very young. The judge tells Mrs. Doinel that he thinks it best that Antoine be put in an observation center. When she requests that it be near the beach, he reminds her that it’s not a vacation, before telling her that Antoine should be there for a few months.
We see a bell ringing and see a projected title: “Observation Center for Delinquent Youth.” A group of boys come out of the center and are let loose on the grounds. A boy goes up to Antoine and asks him why he’s there. Antoine tells him that he stole a typewriter, and the other boy points out someone across the field who stole tires off cars. Elsewhere, two other boys commiserate about their bad home life underneath a statue of an angel embracing a woman. Suddenly, a boy is brought onto the grounds by two officers. The boys gossip about the fact that the new captive tried to escape the center, but was caught. Antoine and some others follow the boy, but are quickly called to line up by one of the authorities at the center. They obediently march around the grounds. Three little girls, the daughters of the caretaker at the center, stay in a penned-in area behind bars, watching the boys march.
They go to a dining hall, and take their places at seats. The authority asks them to show their bread. When he notices that Antoine has already started eating, he calls Antoine to the front of the dining hall and orders him to put his food on the mantle and slaps him hard with his left hand. Antoine takes his plate and nibbles some bread. The scene shifts to Antoine and some other boys talking to the boy who escaped from the center. He tells them he wants to escape again, but they are interrupted by the yelling of an authority, and the group of boys scatters.
Later, the boys wait to go in and see a psychologist. The boy to whom Antoine was speaking earlier advises Antoine not to look at the psychologist’s legs, as she will put it in his file if she sees. When Antoine asks what his file is, the boy tells him that one’s file contains everything other people think of him, “even your neighbors back home.” The boy proudly tells Antoine, “I know mine by heart. It says I’m unstable, with perverted tendencies.” A man brings Antoine in to meet with the psychologist.
The psychologist asks Antoine why he returned the typewriter, to which he responds, “Well, since I couldn’t sell it or anything, I got scared. I don’t know why I returned it, just ‘cus.” The psychologist then asks about the fact that Antoine stole money from his grandmother. He has a straightforward answer for this: “I knew she wouldn’t notice, and she didn’t.” His mother found the money, and he confessed to stealing her money. “Your parents say you’re always lying,” the psychologist says, and he admits that he does, but he often does so because he knows that if he told them the truth, they wouldn’t believe him. The psychologist asks why he doesn’t like his mother, and he answers that he could always tell that his mother didn’t like him, and that she sent him away to be raised by other people until he was 8. Antoine also reveals that he overheard a fight in which her mother told her grandmother that she got pregnant with him before marrying Doinel, and that she had wanted to get an abortion, but his grandmother had stopped her. “It’s thanks to my grandmother that I was born,” he says, matter-of-factly. The psychologist asks him if he’s ever had sex, and he tells her that he once tried to sleep with a prostitute, but it didn’t work out.
Later, visitors are admitted to the center, and we see Mrs. Doinel and René coming in to meet Antoine. From a window, Antoine spots René and gets excited, calling to him. René tries to get admitted to speak to him, but the guard doesn’t let him in. They do admit Mrs. Doinel, however, who comes in and speaks brusquely to her son. René gets on his bicycle and rides away. Back in the center, Mrs. Doinel tells Antoine, “Your letter to your father hurt him very much.” Apparently Antoine wrote Mr. Doinel a letter reminding him of the fact that his mother had wanted an abortion and that he is the son of another man. Mrs. Doinel is furious, and she says, “We were ready to take you back, but the neighbors' gossip put an end to that.” Antoine denies having told anyone in the neighborhood, but Mrs. Doinel doesn’t believe him and rants about what a difficult life she’s had and that Mr. Doinel has “washed his hands of [Antoine] completely.” Mrs. Doinel suggests that the only options for him now are reform schools and labor camps. Antoine just stares at her.
We see the boys marching down the street past a Christmas tree in the town. Then, we see them playing soccer in a field. When the ball goes out of bounds, Antoine grabs it and throws it, before running off and climbing under a fence, attempting to escape the center. An authority soon spots him, however, and chases him. Antoine manages to get away by hiding under a bridge and running in the opposite direction of the teacher. He runs and runs, eventually arriving at a coast. He runs down a flight of steps and down the beach to the water. When he reaches the waves he steps in the water a bit, then looks directly at the camera.
Analysis
When he arrives at the jail, Antoine becomes a true criminal. In many ways, he is now, for better or worse, the adult he has always wanted to be. He rolls up tobacco in newspaper scraps and lights a match on his shoe like a tramp, and lies back on his bed contemplating all of the steps that have brought him to imprisonment. Antoine has been manipulated and misunderstood by a system that has treated him poorly, and is now being punished for the poor treatment and lack of attention he has suffered at the hands of others. While his crimes are relatively small—he doesn’t do well in school because he doesn’t see the point, and he stole a typewriter—he is punished for it as though he is a lowlife. One image that exemplifies the treatment Antoine suffers at the hands of society is the moment his head is moved into profile by a domineering hand for his headshot. This image depicts the ways that Antoine is manipulated by circumstance, forced into positions and roles he never asked to play.
While Mr. and Mrs. Doinel have had a few fleeting moments of showing Antoine love and affection, they are past their breaking point and do not want to deal with him anymore. Mrs. Doinel admits to a judge that Antoine is not Mr. Doinel’s son, but is less concerned with the effect this may have had on Antoine than on the bad reputation she might get should this information reach the people in her community. Thus, they both decide that it would be best for Antoine to go to an observation center, where he will be met with military-level disciplinary action. Rather than seek to give Antoine the love that he needs, both Antoine’s parents and the authorities in power rule that what Antoine needs is more confinement and further punishment. As the judge himself says of Mrs. Doinel’s parenting, “Perhaps you exercise control too inconsistently.” This muddled and misguided ideology encapsulates the misunderstanding between Antoine and the adults in charge of him. They believe that he needs more force, while his only desire is greater freedom and understanding.
As we see in Antoine’s meetings with the psychologist, Antoine has met some rather difficult challenges throughout his childhood, and his difficulties following the rules have stemmed from his feelings of abandonment and rejection from an early age. While Antoine has consistently lied to most adults throughout the film, he is surprisingly honest with the psychologist, whom we hear asking him various questions, but whom we never see. He tells the psychologist that his mother wanted to have an abortion, but was talked out of it by his grandmother, that he was raised by other people until the age of 8, and that he can tell that she doesn’t like him. Antoine speaks with a straightforward understanding of his own rejection by his mother, and candidly makes a case for the fact that the only reason that he misbehaves so badly is because he knows that even if he behaved and told the truth it wouldn’t be met with the love he wants from his parents. For the first time in the movie, when Antoine speaks to the therapist, the viewer is invited to understand more specifics about his interior life, and to sympathize with his tragic early childhood.
Antoine’s opening up about his pain and the problems that he brings up in therapy don't seem to make any difference in helping him connect with his mother. When she comes to visit him, she scowls and tells him that she is disappointed in the letter that he wrote to his stepfather, Doinel. While we do not know what the letter says, we are led to believe that it said something about the fact that Antoine is not actually Doinel’s son. Instead of dealing with the pain that Antoine’s fatherlessness has brought him, Mrs. Doinel makes it all about her, and acts as though Antoine sent the letter to hurt them and ruin their reputation. While the meeting with the psychologist seemed as though it might have bridged the cavernous gap between Antoine and his unforgiving mother, it has quite the opposite effect, and leads Mrs. Doinel to disown him once and for all.
Even though Antoine is abandoned by the world, punished by pain that was inflicted on him by his elders, he is resourceful and does not give up hope for a life of freedom and self-direction. While playing soccer, he manages to escape from the grounds of the center, eluding an instructor who runs after him. In the final moments of the film, we see Antoine running briskly down the side of the road towards his freedom. The camera stays with him for almost two minutes as he runs for his life. The shot gives the impression of expectancy and breathless escape; it is as though Antoine has finally managed to wriggle out of his confinement and find a way through the world. While he is alone, with no real destination, the state of running is one of freedom and relief. Eventually, he arrives at the beach, a place that he told René he had never been. After he runs down a flight of stairs, he runs down the shore to the water, a seemingly endless course, before putting his feet in the ocean. After he has felt the ocean for the first time, he looks over at the camera, noticing it for the first time, a self-conscious and bewildered look on his face. He is alone, without a place to go, or a friend to help him, and it is in this moment of utter solitude that he manages to make contact with Truffaut’s lens, and the viewer—to confront his audience, as if to ask, “What next?”
