In certain ways resembling The 400 Blows by François Truffaut, who helped finance Pialat’s first picture, Naked Childhood departs from its predecessor in the fragmented, documentary approach toward a mischievous orphan as he is shuffled from one foster home to the next. Preternaturally portrayed by Michel Tarrazon, the boy remains contradictory and puzzling, committing as many bafflingly perverse acts as sensitive, sweet ones. Pialat quietly challenges assumption and expectation, populating the story with characters who elude easy empathy or quick criticism, whose actions are neither explained nor judged. Featuring scenes that allow many of his non-actors to spontaneously and poignantly tell their stories onscreen, Pialat creates the sensation of reality unfolding, capturing moments that feel unrehearsed and unacted, sacred in their ordinariness and authenticity. In between, he places narrative gaps that are only apparent during suddenly jarring scenes, exposing the fact that the viewer is not seeing everything. Of course, the viewer is never seeing everything, yet Pialat does not pretend or overdramatize; he lays bare a raw view of humanity and its natural, if painful, lyricism.