Stars: Nicole Stephane, Edouard Dhermitte, Renee Cosima

Director: Jean-Pierre Melville

Summary: The tragic tale of the obsessive and incestuous relationship between teenage siblings who share a single room. French dialogue with English subtitles.

Cinema giants Jean-Pierre Melville (THE WAGES OF FEAR) 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.

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Jean-Pierre Melville's second film, made in 1950, became a significant influence among French film-makers and earned Melville renown as a maverick who could do wonderful things outside his country's studio system. (Melville's independence was a forerunner of that enjoyed later in the decade by New Wave figures such as François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard.) Les Enfants Terriblesis based on a 1929 novel by poet and film-maker Jean Cocteau, who also wrote the script with Melville and according to some people interfered in everything from the casting (the rather stiff male lead was a Cocteau protégé) to the photography. Nevertheless, the story of a sister (an outstanding performance by Nicole Stephane) and brother (Edouard Dhermite) who withdraw into their own, insulated world to play out suggestively erotic dramas, has a fluid, lyrical movement that is part of a visionary whole. In some ways a harbinger of the coming pop narcissism of youth culture, Les Enfants Terriblesis also a timeless tale of mythic exploration of existence and purpose. --Tom Keogh, Amazon.com

Aspect Ratio:	1.33 Full Screen
Main Language:	French
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Feature Commentary, Directors Biography, Biography Of Jean Cocteau
Subtitles:	English
Year:	1949
Release Date:	August 30, 2004
Runtime:	102 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	B F I V D 634
Keywords:	Subtitled, Ones, General, Strange, French, Enfants, Drama, Les, Terribles
Genre:	Drama