Louis Malle's great memoir-movie about boys in occupied France

Yes there have been a million movies about children living through the Holocaust and yes there have been a million movies about coming of age in a boarding school, but Louis Malle's 1987 "Aux Revoir les enfants" (Goodbye, Children) is one of the best - somehow never saw it when it came out, probably played in theaters for a week and in the days of video stores it probably never showed up for rent, glad to catch it yesterday - a memoiristic movie about boys in a Catholic boarding school in a fairly remote part of occupied France in 1944, focusing on the relation between two boys, one a stand-in for Malle, named Quentin, seemingly a tough guy and a leader in the school but we also see that he has especially strong ties to his mother and is not as tough as he acts (in a casting quirk, the actor is rather small and soft-looking) and the new student, Bonnet, who immediately shows academic and musical talent but, as a new guy who's rather shy and secretive, is the object of hazing. We learn - as does Quentin - pretty quickly that Bonnet is a Jew in hiding; the fathers of the school are very brave and noble and harbor quite a few Jews among the boys and the staff. Movie takes some surprising twists and turns as the relation between Quentin and Bonnet develops, and there are some especially powerful and tense scenes, including lunch in a restaurant on visitors' day, with a table of German soldiers whooping it up and a sudden visit from the French police, checking ID's and kicking out the Jews. Closing scene in a snowy courtyard - I won't give it away - is extraordinarily memorable.