“We were brought up as good Catholic boys,” Charlie confided. “But there is no such thing as a good Catholic boy. I am living proof of that.” 

Charlie and his brother went to a Catholic school on the outskirts of Paris. He loved it, whereas Thomas hated it, and was expelled for accidentally setting fire to the priest’s Renault Clio. 

“But Catholic school turned me into a homosexual, and that makes me sad.” He rolled with laughter. “I fooled you! I have such happy memories. I was a prince amongst pigs.” Was this a French expression that was lost in translation?

The conversation happened before we watched Au revoir les enfants (on DVD, no less). The film is set in a French Catholic school in 1944. A boy – Julien – becomes friendly with a new boy – Jean – who turns out to be a Jew in hiding. Throw in the Germans, and you can guess the rest.

Charlie’s school hadn’t been a boarding school, but he probably wished it had been. Living and sleeping amongst dozens of hormonal schoolboys would have suited him wonderfully.

The film’s end scenes were traumatic. Julien, a precocious boy, nervously glances at his friend, tipping off the Gestapo official and, seemingly, causing Jean’s arrest. Later, as he is being led away, he walks over to shake Julien’s hand, but just as their fingers touch, Jean is snatched away. And when the headmaster, Père Jean, also arrested for harbouring Jews, and utters the line – “Au revoir, les enfants!” – the tears rolled down Charlie’s cheeks.  

Louis Malle directed the film and provided the closing voiceover:

“More than forty years have passed, but I will remember every second of that January morning until I die.” (He would depart this world eight years later).

It was based on Malle’s experiences of World War Two when he attended Petit-Collège d’Avon at Fontainebleau. Three Jewish students and a teacher were rounded up and sent to Auschwitz while the school’s headmaster, Père Jacques, would die in the concentration camp at Mauthausen. The memory of his lost friend, and that broken handshake, kept bobbing to the surface, but it took Malle 43 years to make the film.

As the credits rolled, Charlie was in a sombre mood and scanned the back of the empty DVD case. “It was made in 1987, and I cannot believe that I have never seen or heard of this movie before… and it was French too.” He used the fingers of both hands to help him with a calculation. “Do you realise that it has been 38 years since this movie was made? Think about it. Those boy actors will now be old men.”