I ragazzi terribili

I recently saw this movie, titled The Strange Ones in English, with English subtitles on TCM. I know a little French, and it seemed the English translations may not have captured all the nuances, but I'm not sure.

Before writing my review I wanted to see what more experienced or better informed people were saying, and I gather that most of the favorable reviewers liked the daring themes presented in stark black and white format with highly dramatic acting and artistic camera work. No doubt about it, this movie features all of those, and I did watch the whole thing because of those elements.

As with many French films I've seen over the years, this film presents an amoral view of life, i.e., there is no right or wrong, in fact in this movie there is no real consideration of right or wrong in the script or the story at all.

Minutes before my sister learned that her fiancée had been killed in a car accident, she asked me "what is existentialism?" I had a sense for the concept but I struggled to make it concrete. That awful phone call ended the conversation about literature, but I never forgot that moment. Now I know the answer, and The Strange Ones could well serve as a teaching tool in literature or philosophy classes; a person actively watching and thinking about this movie will "get" what existentialism is (in cinema anyway).

This film brilliantly presents strange people, maybe "weird people" better says it, going through unusual events in an unusual context. In existentialism nothing really has overarching meaning, so whatever happens, happens, and the results yield not so much tragedy as very dark farce.

First, I have to admit that I nearly didn't write this comment at all. I read a rave review of Les Enfants Terribles by an earlier user and agreed with (almost) every word of it. What more was there to add? Then I searched my soul for a day or so, and had to admit that this film REALLY does not work for me - brilliantly directed, skilfully acted, moodily photographed and lyrically scored though it may be.

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.

Try as I might to warm to this film, I cannot help imagining it with a different cast. As the brother and sister, Helmut Berger and Dominique Sanda from The Garden of the Finzi Continis. As the androgynous sexual pirate Agathe/Dargelos, maybe Katharine Hepburn from Sylvia Scarlett or Indrid Thulin from The Magician or (why not?) the immortal Anne Carlisle from Liquid Sky. Most important of all - and I know this smacks of heresy - I would much rather Cocteau had directed it himself. One great auteur should be enough for any film.

David Melville

Before he made the Bob Le Flambeur, the "Grandfather of the New Wave" made this film in collaboration with Cocteau. The cinematography in this film is pretty good, and Melville does a good job at replicating the feel of a Cocteau film. This is perhaps Melville's most "Un-Melville" film. There's no hardened men or bank robbers to be had here. The portrait of a sister/brother relationship is well-done and believable, and easily holds your attention the entire film.

The imagery is great, particularly towards the ending and the shot of the dead mother. It's almost dream-like! With this film, and Bob, it's easy to see why Melville was such and inspiration to future New Wave directors such as Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol, etc. Highly recommended, especially to Cocteau/Melville fans!

Another KVIFF viewing of Jean-Pierre Melville's tribute section, after LE SAMOURAI (1967, a 9/10). This one is Melville's earlier work, a collaboration with Jean Cocteau, an adaption of Cocteau's internationally famed eponymous novel, which at first glance would seem to be deviated from Melville's comfort zone, the film has a more explicit portrayal of humanity in its darkest corner, and the fodder has a comprehensive penchant to theatricality and character study.

A quite conspicuous clash comes from the cast, to wit Edouard Dermithe, the leading protagonist as Peter, who would not be Melville's first choice but thanks to Cocteau's relentless insistence (Edouard is said to be his lover at that time), notwithstanding his dandy contour is unable to deliver any conceivable conviction which his role should have embodied, no matter how many close-ups swooping upon his statuesque face, it is certainly beyond the rescue even Melville had exerted himself to the utmost. Nicole Stéphane and Renée Cosima, on the other hand, are the messiahs of the cast, several emotion-eruption takes are right to the point.

At least Melville still manifests his capacity is other department of the films, the cinematography from DP Henri Decaë infuses very seclude intimacy during the siblings' scenes when a whiff of incestuous ambiguity permeates the whole frame. When the setting moves to the grand apartment in the latter part in the film, the spiderweb of deconstructing an immoral subterfuge foiled with riveting and labyrinthine shots culminates the film with a quite amazing coda, which by no means should be even scarcely credited for Mr. Dermithe.

So the win-win combo seems not to fire up to one's expectation, and it is a quite qualified candidate needs a remake, then who is the proper person at the helm? I dare to suggest Jacques Audiard if one must be French.

Jean Cocteau, considered one of the foremost French artists of the 20th century, wrote and narrated this bizarrely familial tale about a brother and sister who have a strong love/hate relationship that expresses itself in high-strung shouting bouts that result in one of them storming out of the room. Clearly, this is a volatile relationship that is only made worse when the elder sister, Elisabeth, marries a young, rich mogul named Mike who unexpectedly leaves his entire fortune to her. Adding to this drama is the brother, Paul, being injured in a snowball fight and forced to rest extensively in Elisabeth's mansion.

As a young girl and man that are acquaintances of the siblings enter the equation, the drama heats up which leads to serious revelations and underlying feelings coming to the surface. Such a story in the early 1950s had to be seen, even in Europe, as somewhat controversial given the incestuous undertones of Elisabeth and Paul's relationship. Even so, to see classic Cocteau as directed by a young, up-and-coming Jean-Pierre Melville still feeling out his soon to be unique and inspired style.

Though at times a bit French-flavored melodrama and bizarre psycho- sexual encounters, Les Enfants Terribles still has enough power and creative camera work to engage the viewer up until the blunt conclusion.