Les Enfants Terribles Reviews

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.

Poor

The start is promising, and it goes downhill from there. The Dreamers, which was based on the book The Holy Innocents by Gilbert Adair which in turn was based on Les Enfants Terribles, is far more interesting & well made.

Les Enfants Terribles was written and filmed at a time when what was meant could not be said. So it's full of symbolism, it looks bizarre and strained. Lots of theatrical over-acting. A waste of time, watch The Dreamers instead.

Le Film Terrible!

This film must surely mark a lowpoint in the careers of both Jean Cocteau and Jean-Pierre Melville. Telling of the relationship between a domineering (possibly psychotic?) young girl and her feeble, seemingly bisexual brother, it is poorly handled all round and the story is laden with such ludicrous, unbelievable plot developments that it's very difficult to keep watching. Even the fine use of Vivaldi and Bach becomes excessive. Worse, the narration by Cocteau himself is frankly embarrassing.

This kind of overheated psychodrama needs a lot better handling than this amateurish and unconvincing effort. If it's prime Cocteau you're after, try ORPHEE. For superior Melville, go for BOB LE FLAMBEUR (due for release here next year) or, even better, ARMY OF SHADOWS, which is hard to find in any form but is worth the effort.

This film, however, belongs on the shelf under T for Terrible.

Seriously challenging

Yes I know it's a masterpiece of French cinema and literature but it really didn't do it for me.

Acting was not convincing, the settings were nice and evocative and the narrative just exhausted me well before the end. Sorry Jean!

[Highly rated reviewer]

Some Extraordinary Moments

There are some extraordinary moments in this film, particularly in the second half where the overtones of classical tragedy (enhanced by the Bach and Vivaldi on the soundtrack), the (fittingly) portentous narration by Cocteau himself and the feeling of an inexorable fate awaiting both of the main characters become overwhelming. The intensity of the performance by Nicole Stephane as she weaves her web of deceit and finally succumbs to madness is gripping; but the earlier stages of the film are less compelling. This is unlike pretty much anything else directed by Jean-Pierre Melville but there are some wonderful shots in the latter stages, not least the overhead in the very final scene.

[Highly rated reviewer]

Overbearing

It is obviously one of those films that anyone who is into the Cinematheque Francaise must watch once, and preferably with the large Martini in both hands, otherwise if you are anything like my you won't be able to see it to the end with what seems purposeless screaming, obsessive behaviour and over theatrical acting

Tedious drivel

Fans of JP Melville beware! This is more like a Jean Cocteau film at his worst.

I don't know why it's considered a classic, the acting is wooden and the actors miscast,

the narration grates and is completely unnecessary and the whole thing was so tedious it

left me caring nothing for the characters and narrative that I didn't bother watching the last 20 minutes.

[Highly rated reviewer]

Happy families

This film was a joy to watch. Any outline of the plot would make it sound like Hitchcock, but this is to miss out on the mood of the film. There is a childlike quality about the villainies, of children exploring relationships. I will certainly watch it again, to pick up the nuances I missed in the first pass.

[Highly rated reviewer]

Poor subtitling?

While bursting with cinematic flair and containing some wonderful moments (not least the thrilling finale), this film suffers badly from some under-worked and superficial characterisation - especially in the supporting roles - and a great deal of repetition. I felt like I was watching the same scene over and over, which was perhaps one of the points of the story but still made for some pretty dull viewing.

In addition, I was left with a suspicion that the English subtitles I had been reading were perhaps not of a particularly high standard. In the special features on the DVD there is an interview with the leading actress which includes a short clip from the film's final scene that is played with quite different subtitles to those used in the main feature. These obviously superior subtitles greatly improved the scene, and I was left wondering if my opinion of the film would have been different had these superior subtitles been in place throughout.

[Highly rated reviewer]

Claustrophobic

I think this probably is a masterpiece. There are obvious difficulties: the indeterminate age of the actors and their habit of addressing the back of the stalls rather than the microphone; the static nature of much of it punctuated with highly stylised shots; its literary nature - the camera will hold a scene while Cocteaus's third person voice-over explains significances, much like reading a novel, but, as a portrait of a disaffected, lost, post-war generation seen in this stifling brother-sister relationship, it has undeniable power.

It would make a very interesting double bill with Bertolucci's 'The Dreamers'.