The Strange Ones

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Taylor L Jean-Pierre Melville, the acclaimed director of iconic French crime films, teams up with Jean Cocteau, the celebrated author of surrealist novels. The results are, as the title suggests, very strange. Les Enfantes terribles is nominally a film about a pair of siblings (Elisabeth and Paul) with an unusually close bond, sharing the same room and a 'private game' all their own. Their relationship is intimate but torrid and not always affectionate, influencing each other's lives substantially but without any other characters commenting on their closeness; it's not an exercise in realism, but keeps the literary, almost mythic flavor that Cocteau imparts on the story in the novel. That seems to be a major weakness, bringing Cocteau in to adapt his own work (and having him as narrator); it's not an adaptation so much as it is a film translation, watching a novel play out with visual cues. It's got all the explicit interpretation of a film, with all the guidance of a novel through endless narration, which seems to be the worst of both worlds. The take on sibling intimacy is interesting, but the story - full of deceptions, poisons, invalid recoveries, death, secret letters, romantic longing, and personal betrayals - feels alien in how it interprets emotion, or maybe just very French. Nicole Stéphane's take on Elisabeth is worth a mention, very superficially dramatic and deceptive, but overall just making a trancelike narrative doesn't mean the film is good. (2.5/5) Rated 2.5/5 Stars •  Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 01/08/23 Full Review s r Thoughtful and well made showing the crazy of juveniles and their struggles with identity. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review Audience Member It's mostly just boring and flat, despite some astonishing moments of experimentation and inventive camera angles, the mixture of the two great auteurs (Melville and Cocteau) goes sour. Rated 2.5/5 Stars •  Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 01/14/23 Full Review Audience Member Petulant spirits give way to a swirling pseudo-tragedy in this lyrical adaptation of Jean Cocteau's surrealist novella. Director Jean-Pierre Melville breathes fear into a frivolous, fleeting story, and ensures it aptly descends into a semi-Shakespearian game of hearts. Nicole Stephane is superb as scheming sister, Elisabeth, but it's Melville's musings - both visual and lyrical - which turn Cocteau's ambiguous tale into an tangible event. Infantile hearts die hard. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/14/23 Full Review Audience Member It's surprising how dull Les Enfants Terribles is given the talent involved, the central story of jealousy and loss uninteresting due to the fact that so much time is devoted to other elements of the plot. It's nice that Paul has a crush on a boy at one point, as this wasn't a widely acceptable notion to portray in film in 1950, but that development doesn't really yield anything compelling as the boy leaves within the first twenty minutes so that a woman who looks like him can show up and steal his heart in a more "acceptable" way. Cocteau's style is occasionally evident through his collaboration with Melville, but its nowhere near enough to save a central narrative that doesn't offer-up anything worth investing in. Rated 2.5/5 Stars •  Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 02/10/23 Full Review walter m "Les Enfants Terribles" starts with boys with being boys, but maybe too much as Paul(Edouard Dermithe) is injured by an errant throw in a snowball fight lobbed by Dargelos(Renee Cosima). While Dargelos is expelled, it is not for that but for a run-in with the headmaster(Jean-Marie Robain). As far as Paul goes, the family doctor(Maurice Revel) says he will be okay with some rest, which leaves his sister Elisabeth(Nicole Stephane) to take care of him along with their invalid mother(Maria Cyliakus). When she dies, their friend Gerard(Jacques Bernard) takes them on a holiday to the sea. "Les Enfants Terribles" is a darkly entertaining tale of family tragedy and how family while comforting can also be the worst of traps at times. So while the movie has one eye on the past, it also has another one on the future, as these young people have already had more than their share of experience with death. That not only the involves the complicated feelings the characters have for each other that they have a hard time expressing despite all the words but also the movie's anticipating the French New Wave in its character structure and linking narration. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review Read all reviews

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