Crecia C. Swaim
Martine
has long hair. She writes a postcard to her cousin,
Raoul Briquet
, that is read to the class. Her father is played by
François Truffaut
. She goes to summer camp and meets
Patrick Demousseau
there. She kisses Patrick in a scene that really happened to Truffaut when he was about twelve years old.
Raoul Briquet
receives a postcard from his cousin
Martine
that is read to the class.
Laurent Riffle
is the son of a hairdresser and his mom helps run the shop.
Mathieu
and
Franck De Luca
are brothers. They spend their money on candy and the swimming pool. They try to sell this year's school books, before the end of the school year, at the pawn shop. They send food to
Sylvie
when she is left alone at home. They somehow get money that is not theirs to buy a bunch of toy guns to give to their friends, and are forced to give them all back when they get busted.
Patrick Demousseau
is always wearing a purple shirt; lives alone with and cares for his handicapped father. In class, he is often unprepared, in one scene he was actually "saved by the bell!" He didn't have his book to do his recitation homework, but after five minutes of in-class preparation he did pretty well. He is polite and seems to want to do the right thing. He has a good memory (he remembered the whole shopping list his father wanted him to get) but doesn't do much school work. He loves to read, and spends his pocket money on books. Patrick befriends
Julien
. He washes cars on Sunday to make some extra money. He goes to the movies with
Brouillard
and two girls Brouillard invites, but is too shy to try to kiss either one. He goes to summer camp, meets
Martine
, and they kiss.
Mademoiselle Petit
is the female teacher in the film. She is strict, has high expectations of her students, and has students memorize a lot (plays, dates and facts.) She is not very nice to
Julien
when he joins her class, and she feels guilty for it when it is discovered that he is abused at home.
Julien Leclou
is called a welfare-child in the film. He arrives at school in mid-June, lives in a shack in a non-housing area, and gets locked out of the house a lot. He gets his books thrown out the window at him when he asks for them, gets rid of dishes that were broken at home, and tells
Patrick
that he got locked out of the house and then gets called inside. He asks an older boy (from a different school) what was on television the previous night so that he can talk about it with classmates and no one will know he has no television. He steals a compass to pawn for cash and combs the amusement park after hours for lost money and items. He sneaks a friend into the theater so that they can both go. He lives with his mother and grandmother and is verbally and physically abused by one or both of them, which gets uncovered when Julien refuses to undress for a school physical examination.
Brouillard
is actually named Bruno Rouillard in the cast list. Brouillard means fog or haze in French, so perhaps it is a nickname. He refuses to put emotion into his recitation until the teacher is out of the room, when he does he comic version. He likes to "pick up" girls, and convinces
Patrick
to try it with him. He ends up putting his arms around both girls they take to the movies when Patrick proves shy.
Sylvie
is the young girl who, after school, flirts with one of the
De Luca
brothers, who later says she lives in a trash can. Sylvie has two fish named Plic and Ploc. When her father tries to identify which is which, it is difficult to tell whether she keeps changing the story or he can't keep them straight. She is excited when her father says they are all going to eat at a restaurant, so she decides to clean up her wooly elephant pocket book with some water from her fish bowl and a scrub brush. Much to her dismay, her parents tell her that she can't talk it to dinner since it is old and ratty. She insists on taking it, and won't even accept one of Mom's nice pocketbooks as a replacement. Her father threatens to leave her at home if she doesn't take the other bag, and she says I'm staying here (or rather, it's all the same to me/ça m'est égal.) After one last chance, they lock her in and leave. She takes her father's work megaphone (he's the Chief of Police) and yells into the courtyard of her building complex that she is hungry. The neighbors send her food through an improvised pulley system.
Richard Golfier
is asked by
Gregory's
mom to walk her son home; the boys visit
Monsieur Richer
, who has just moved into their apartment building. Golfier is sitting with his father at an outdoor café on Sunday. He is the boy who the
De Luca
brothers convince to pay them his barbershop money, and instead they cut his hair themselves. Golfier does not tell his father that he didn't go to the barbershop, so
Monsieur Golfier
storms into the shop and yells at
Monsieur Riffle
until they figure out what happened.
Monsieur Richer
is the male teacher in the film. He and his pregnant wife move into the same apartment building as
Gregory
and
Golfier
. He forgets to leave his keys for the movers, so his wife has to come to school to pick them up; he kisses his wife goodbye behind the frosted glass window of the classroom door. His wife,
Lydie
, has a baby named
Thomas
(like
tomate
, as the children say!) towards the end of the film.
Gregory
is the young boy in the red overalls who gets walked home by
Golfier
and meets the
Richers.
He is raised by a single mother. He carries bread upstairs by dragging it on the ground, then runs into the Richer apartment the following day and makes a mess with the groceries his mother just bought and the Richers' hammer. His mother leaves him home alone while she goes to look for her lost wallet, during which time he tries to catch his cat Minou and hug her, but chases her out the window instead and ends up falling out the 9th floor window, only to bounce up, unharmed.
Gregory's mother
works at the cinema.
Inconsequential characters:
Fougerie
is late for class;
Privadier
gives an uninspired recitation of the scene from Molière's
L'Avare
;
Froment
has puffy eyes, wears a drab green button-up, and keeps saying "I don't know" when asked about the recitation assignment;
Fayet
wears a black and white striped shirt;
Hurbagnac
wears a yellow t-shirt.
Gardaret
is asked by Mlle. Petit to take over the class when she is called out.