Les Enfants Terribles
1949
Cinema giants Jean-Pierre Melville (UN FLIC) and Jean Cocteau (LA BELLE AT LA BETE) collaborated to create LES ENFANTS TERRIBLES, a stunning portrait of surreal perversion and narcissism based on Cocteau's novel of the same name. When teenage Paul, the fragile protagonist, is mysteriously felled by a powerful snowball thrown by .. Read more
| Starring | Nicole Stephane, Edouard Dhermitte, Renee Cosima |
|---|---|
| Director | Jean-Pierre Melville |
| Genres | Drama, World Cinema |
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Les Enfants Terribles
Cinema giants Jean-Pierre Melville (UN FLIC) and Jean Cocteau (LA BELLE AT LA BETE) collaborated to create LES ENFANTS TERRIBLES, a stunning portrait of surreal perversion and narcissism based on Cocteau's novel of the same name. When teenage Paul, the fragile protagonist, is mysteriously felled by a powerful snowball thrown by his dastardly and handsome idol, Dargelos, he returns home to recuperate under the unwilling care of his irascible sister, Elisabeth. The two share a bedroom in the home of their ailing mother. Within the their bedroom, the siblings have constructed a private universe of erotically charged jokes, elaborate rituals, and coded behaviour sealing them off from the rest of the world. When their mother unexpectedly dies Paul and Elisabeth spiral even further into their own world, with Paul's fragile condition keeping him from returning to school. The incestuous undertones and poisonous ambiance are further complicated as Paul and Elisabeth are joined first by Paul's friend Gerard, who is obsessed with Elisabeth, and finally by Agathe, Elisabeth's colleague who is the spitting image of Paul's nemesis Dargelos. As the diabolical Elisabeth becomes unable to hide her dangerous love for Paul, the film heads for its high-pitched climax. Cocteau's tale of sublimation and deception comes to life under Melville's lucid direction.
| Starring | Nicole Stephane, Edouard Dhermitte, Renee Cosima |
|---|---|
| Director | Jean-Pierre Melville |
| Studio | BFI VIDEO |
| Run time | DVD: 1 hr 42 mins |
| Certificate | |
| Genres | Drama, World Cinema |
| Language | DVD: French |
| Subtitles | DVD: English |
| Released | DVD: 30 Aug 2004 Production year: 1949 |
| Format | DVD |
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Critics' reviews (3)
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Budgetary restraint goes a long way to explaining the effectiveness of this adaptation of Jean Cocteau's 1929 novel. By shooting much of the action in his own apartment and on the stage of the Théâtre Pigalle, director Jean-Pierre Melville was able to reproduce the simmering claustrophobia that makes the obsessive relationship between brother and sister Edouard Dermit and Nicole Stéphane so intense. Although Cocteau narrates and directed the seaside scene, the film's erotic tension and visual poetry are down to Melville's finesse, which ensures that the tale becomes troubling tragicomedy instead of melodramatic high camp. Shame about Dermit's near-ruinously stilted acting, though.
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One of Cocteau's most satisfying contributions to the cinema, largely because of Melville's lucid interpretation of the... read more on Time Out
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Most helpful member's review
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7 out of 7 people found this review helpful
Creative Schizophrenia
For all its many splendours, this Melville film of a Cocteau novel suffers from a malady I can only describe as 'creative schizophrenia.' It is recognisably a work by two highly individual artists, each of whom creates his own distinctive and magical world. No film by Melville could ever be mistaken for anybody else's. The same is true of Cocteau.
How do these two worlds mix together? To put it bluntly, not at all. This is most apparent in the (mis)casting of the androgynous and incestuous brother-sister duo. With his porcelain cheekbones and languid sensuality, Edouard Dhermitte is a classic Cocteau actor. (He was, in fact, Cocteau's lover at the time.) With her politicised Left Bank angst and 'butch' vitality, Nicole Stephane is a classic Melville heroine. (She had starred in his much finer 1947 film Le Silence de la Mer.) These two actors scarcely seem to belong on the same planet, let alone in the same family.
Still more disheartening is the utter lack of allure of Renee Cosima, a pudgy young ingenue who is cast as the brother's two ambisexual love objects - the sadistic schoolboy Dargelos and the lovelorn model Agathe. Lacking even the tiniest flicker of charisma, whether as a man or as a woman, Cosima makes it difficult for us to empathise with the hero's erotic longings, or to care much about the hothouse melodrama that breaks loose as a result. -
Most recent members' review
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7 out of 7 people found this review helpful
Creative Schizophrenia
For all its many splendours, this Melville film of a Cocteau novel suffers from a malady I can only describe as 'creative schizophrenia.' It is recognisably a work by two highly individual artists, each of whom creates his own distinctive and magical world. No film by Melville could ever be mistaken for anybody else's. The same is true of Cocteau.
How do these two worlds mix together? To put it bluntly, not at all. This is most apparent in the (mis)casting of the androgynous and incestuous brother-sister duo. With his porcelain cheekbones and languid sensuality, Edouard Dhermitte is a classic Cocteau actor. (He was, in fact, Cocteau's lover at the time.) With her politicised Left Bank angst and 'butch' vitality, Nicole Stephane is a classic Melville heroine. (She had starred in his much finer 1947 film Le Silence de la Mer.) These two actors scarcely seem to belong on the same planet, let alone in the same family.
Still more disheartening is the utter lack of allure of Renee Cosima, a pudgy young ingenue who is cast as the brother's two ambisexual love objects - the sadistic schoolboy Dargelos and the lovelorn model Agathe. Lacking even the tiniest flicker of charisma, whether as a man or as a woman, Cosima makes it difficult for us to empathise with the hero's erotic longings, or to care much about the hothouse melodrama that breaks loose as a result. -
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Cinema giants Jean-Pierre Melville (UN FLIC) and Jean Cocteau (LA BELLE AT LA BETE) collaborated to create LES ENFANTS TERRIBLES, a stunning portrait of surreal perversion and narcissism based on ... -