Truffaut has always been fascinated by innocence. And by children…. [In L'Enfant Sauvage (The Wild Child)] we have the archetypal innocent, and the systematic corruption of innocence: animal nature—in the shape of a wolf boy—tamed and 'civilised' by rational society, in the person of a well-meaning doctor and according to the notions of the time. It is the back-to-nature fantasy in reverse; a detailed, almost clinical examination of the process by which impulse is subdued by education….

[The] film is sober, unemotional, pared down to essentials.

Style, in fact, is appropriately matched to content, here perhaps more rigorously than in any of Truffaut's previous films….

[L'Enfant Sauvage is] as much a study of mentor as of pupil, for beneath that austere, seemingly impassive exterior there is a thirst for knowledge which not even the discouragement of failure can quench…. [One] gradually realises that the film is...