Review of Small Change (aka L`Argent De Poche/Pocket Money)

Introduction

Filmed in 1976 by Francois Truffant, "Argent de Poche", or "Small Change" as was its international title is a tale of life in the small French town of Thiers during the summer of 1976. this film captures nicely a variety of tales about the people that live there including a girls first kiss, a single mother longing for Mr Right and various other small things which build a bigger tale centred around the films main subject, the towns children.

Video

The video quality isn`t the best, the picture suffers from a lot of visual grain but this can be attributed to the age of the source material. In terms of focus and contrast the film fares better but still not the crispest picture that you`re likely to find but that`s expected really.

Camera work and direction are well crafted, nice and subtle basically which work well in this type of film. The director Truffants is well renowned for this kind of thing and this film is no exception.

Subtitles are nicely done and are quite clear throughout duration of the film.

Audio

Sound comes in a variety of languages other than English so we have to make do with the subtitles unless your French is up to scratch! The dialogue is nice and clear for the most part though there is one or two bits where it comes off as slightly muffled and can sound slightly tinny at times too.

Features

The only extra on the disc is a copy of the original theatrical trailer.

Conclusion

I wasn`t really expecting much from this I must confess and in terms of the overall DVD content I wasn`t wrong. Poor extras and low quality sound and picture (due mostly to the films age though) let this down. However the film itself is quite interesting, it`s basically all small things that the story centre`s around, there isn`t a strong overall plotline. This makes it stand out from most other films nicely and the actual stories are relatively interesting; the fact there are so many do help keep you interested. Basically it`s a sweet feel good film which doesn`t come off as being overly sickly for a nice change!