At the time,the movie was highly praised for its human side and its educational value (see the last line) ;today one sees it in a less flattering light .
Jean-Paul Le Chanois 's first efforts were really worthwhile ("sans laisser d'adresse" " agence matrimoniale" "messieurs Ludovic" ) and one of his earlier work "l'école buissonnière" (=playing truant) already dealt with the educative problems ;it was his finest hour and it has aged well :the same cannot be said of "par-dessus le mur" ,in spite of a good cast,particularly the luminous Silvia Montfort (who was a good Eponine Thénardier in the director's hopeless "les miserables ") ,an earnest thespian ,very credible when she shows sympathy for her fellow men,women and teenagers .
Simone is married to Jean ,and both make a happy couple ,whose life is not that easy : life under Paris suburbian skies was no always picnic even in those days .
The depiction of the suberbanites working in the capital's comings and goings verges on caricature though.
Besides ,the (probably overpossessive ) in-laws have not yet accepted Simone .
But overnight ,something has changed : the wife is pregnant and is anxious to be a really good mother to her soon-to-come baby .
Hence the title :"over the wall" ;Simone watches her neighbors live : this collection of pen portraits does not always avoid clichés: a father who's got an affair , deserts his wife -who comes from a modest milieu - and his sixteen-year -old boy who runs away;another one is a model who,when he returns home , teaches his brats about the solar system ; the more convincing portrait remains that of the permissive family ; a bourgeois one (dad is a lawyer who defends children and teens) who lets their "adorable" offspring do what he wants: "a child prodigy who is brilliant at school " says the snob self-satisfied (and self-indulgent) mom (Françoise Prevost). One often meets this "king child" today.
There's also a detective plot:Simone 's moped has been stolen and the teenager who runs away is the main suspect ; but there's also "the pack ", a group of teenagers whose rebellion is harmless .
In fact ,there are too many characters and their problems are only skimmed over .It was the sixties ,and Le Chanois's style had already begun to be a thing of the past.
