Written as Malle's semi-autobiography, the film tells a coming-of-age story about a 14-year-old boy (Ferreux) growing up in bourgeois surroundings in post-World War II Dijon, France, with a complex relationship with his Italian-born mother (Massari).

Laurent Chevalier is a 14-year-old boy living in Dijon in 1954 who loves jazz, always receives the highest grades in his class, and opposes the First Indochina War.

He has an unloving father, Charles, a gynecologist; an affectionate Italian-born mother, Clara; and two older brothers, Thomas and Marc.

Laurent also discovers that Clara has a lover, and upset by the adultery, runs to tell Charles, who, busy with his practice, angrily turns him away.

[14] Roger Ebert gave the film a four-star review, comparing it favorably to The 400 Blows, and wrote of the incest that Malle "takes the most highly charged subject matter you can imagine, and mutes it into simple affection.

"[15] Judith Crist, writing for New York, praised the "remarkable" performances of Lea Massari, Benoît Ferreux and Daniel Gélin.

[16] Richard Schickel, writing for Life, said he had a "strange enthusiasm" for the film, which he felt demonstrated "taste, charm and the most winning sentiment.

[18] In The New York Times, Roger Greenspun wrote that the film "isn't very good" and "that it could probably have been made with as much distinction by any of those directors, all equally anonymous, who specialize in urban romantic comedy (or tragedy) of a sophistication that is supposed to be peculiarly French.

[19] In 1989, Desson Howe wrote in The Washington Post that the film maintained its "fresh intelligence and delicacy" and that "Malle's world of sarcastic, upper-middle-class brats seems to be Murmur's most enduring creation.

"[6] In 1990, Richard Stengel gave the film an A− in Entertainment Weekly, writing, "Almost everything about this coming-of-age story rings true, and Malle avoids any heavy-handed explanations of family behavior.

[21] In his 2002 Movie & Video Guide, Leonard Maltin gives the film three and a half stars, calling it a "fresh, intelligent, affectionately comic tale".