After enjoying his two biggest critical successes of the '70s with the filmmaking ode Day for Night and one of his most tragic studies in romance, The Story of Adele H, filmmaker François Truffaut shifted gears yet again with one of the most charming films in his entire filmography. Designed as a child's-eye view of the world over the course of a school year, L'argent de poche (released as Pocket Money in the U.K. and Small Change in the U.S.) is a bittersweet look at young people coming of age that touches on the challenges wrought on them by adult figures. Tailored to suit the roles played by the young actors with freedom to improvise and let their real personalities shine through, the film isn't so much a traditional dramatic narrative as a slice of life that still stands as an often overlooked gem in the filmmaker's impressive canon.

In late summer in the town of Thiers, we start to follow a classroom of young children at school, at home, and all around as they forge friendships and start to discover the beginnings of interest in romance. The focus more or less falls on two pals, Patrick (Desmouceaux), who lives with his dad and has a crush on his teacher, and Julien (Goldmann), who has an abusive home life. The film frequently digresses to capture the experiences of other kids, including a priceless apartment rally to help a young girl yelling claims of starvation from an open window. Sort of a spiritual successor to Truffaut's landmark debut The 400 Blows which focused on a singular young boy, this one operates on a broader canvas with a very sincere message at the end about the importance of valuing and protecting childhood from harm. This being Truffaut, it's also an ode to cinema showing how the simple pleasures of going to the movies create community and forge enduring memories.

At least into the mid-'80s, this film was a popular revival item on the repertory and library circuit as well as a noted favorite of child psychologists. It was also a key film in New World Pictures' attempts to get into the art house market (which also saw them scooping up works by Akira Kurosawa and Ingmar Bergman), eventually passing over to MGM/UA's ownership via its international distributor, United Artists. That led to a VHS and laserdisc release in the early '90s, followed by a DVD in the U.S. in 2001 that suffered from the studio's baffling insistence on releasing all 1.66:1 films without anamorphic enhancement. After that it spent quite a long time out of circulation like several other MGM-owned Truffaut films until it finally surfaced for its first English-friendly Blu-ray release in 2023 from Kino Lorber as part of a two-disc Truffaut collection along with The Green Room, The Wild Child, and The Man Who Loved Women (following a French-only Blu-ray from Carlotta in 2022). The theatrical trailers are the sole extras.

For some reason the Kino Lorber set went out of circulation very quickly, and in 2025, Radiance Films in the U.K. gave the film its first-ever special edition on Blu-ray under the Pocket Money title. The transfer is exactly the same as the HD master provided by MGM for the earlier Blu-ray, meaning it looks excellent and has no significant issues. The LPCM 1.0 French mono audio is also in fine shape, and a big difference here is the optional English subtitles which are much more thorough and accurate than the earlier studio-provided ones. That's especially important in the classroom scenes, where little asides and turns of phrase get more attention here. The extras kick off with some production footage with Truffaut and the cast (3m57s) including the director talking about the process of doing a somewhat improvised film for child actors, followed by an interview with Truffaut for Swiss TV (29m40s) about his career to that point, his perspective as a former critic, his process as a writer versus director, and his thoughts on his own skill set. A new interview with curator Sonali Joshi (11m37s) is a perceptive study of the film's depictions of teaching, parental figures, authority, and social class as they relate to bringing up kids. Finally you get a Trailers from Hell presentation by filmmaker Allan Arkush including memories from his time cutting the trailer for New World, as well as the standalone U.S. trailer by itself. The limited edition also comes with a limited edition booklet featuring Truffaut's written intro to the film.

Reviewed on November 19, 2025