The Cousins

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Scott R @ScottR Jun 6, 2026 NYT 1000 films. A moving drama that focuses on two cousins living together as students. One taking the other under his wing, only to steal his love and it leads to drama and irony as the semester progresses. An interesting take on adults who come into their lives, it’s well made and resonated with me. RUS See more Nov 7, 2016 A zany, crazy group of Parisians seen through the lens of a young man new to the city. That's about the whole movie. See more Apr 15, 2016 This movie by French New Wave filmmaker Claude Chabrol has a pretty simple plot, but was enjoyable nonetheless. In a nutshell, Charles, an innocent and earnest young law student, moves to Paris from the provinces to live with Paul, his sophisticated, profligate cousin. He's immediately exposed to the party life, which is both wild (there is a lot of flirting and bottle smashing) and somewhat amusing (the young men are all in suits and ties, play Bridge in bars, and listen to Mozart and Wagner at parties). He falls for Florence, a woman who's been around, and while she wants to have a meaningful relationship, she's convinced by Paul and another friend that she'll find him boring. She ends up with Paul instead, and moves in with the two of them. Charles actually takes it quite well, sharing meals with them and doing his best to ignore them, for example, as they shower together. He gets a free book and great advice from a bookseller (study hard, and "Read Dostoyevsky - he addresses all your concerns!"), who was naturally my favorite character :). Exams loom, and while Charles tries to apply himself, Paul parties on. I won't spoil it any more than I already have. This was one of those old movies that was anything but boring. The New Wave movement had as its aim to make movies that were different in content and style, and this succeeds; it's quite edgy for its time, and Chabrol has some great shot sequences here. Seeing it really transported me to the Latin Quarter in 1959 Paris. See more Jul 28, 2015 Claude Chabrol's deceptively simple story of two very different cousins is not so powerful because of the plot -- which packs a feeling of Hitchcock in the most passive of ways. The power of this film is the artistic manner in which we see (and feel) the film unfold. There is always a bit of debate regarding if this or Truffaut actually made the first of La Nouvelle Vague films. In the end, that doesn't matter. At it's time, no one had seen a move this realistic and oddly provocative. It still carries an odd sense of "new-ness" about it. The clash of a country mouse and his hipster cousin is as much a societal critique as it is an aggressive bit of dark humor manipulation of cinema. There will only ever be one Claude Chabrol. This may not be his finest film, but it manages to capture almost all of the elements that make him a truly film genius. See more Oct 5, 2014 MUBI says that Les Cousins was the first New Wave movie however it did not succeed in launching the French New Wave as did soon to follow Truffaut's "Les Quatre Cents Coups". Les Cousins is a good movie about polar opposite cousins who share an apartment in Paris. See more Aug 22, 2014 A neo-realist, if not existentialist fable. See more Read all reviews

The Cousins

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