The Devil's Playground (1976, Fred Schepisi) (Patreon)

69/100

Second viewing, last seen at TIFF 2000 (on my very first day at the festival; it was the fourth film I ever saw there). On the one hand, it might as well be titled Chastity Warps; on the other hand, a less judgmental treatment of this particular subject is difficult to imagine. One kid winds up dead as a result of the mini-cult that develops around mortification, but Schepisi handles the tragedy so matter-of-factly that he never seems to be assigning blame—not even to the secret society itself, which everyone seems to know about and just sort of tolerate, while advising the younger, more impressionable kids to steer clear. Tentative exploratory feelers among the seminary students are credibly oblique, with Tom taking almost the entire movie to pick up on that one boy's signals...only to discover, when they finally head into the woods, that his partner doesn't even really understand what masturbation is, believing that you're just meant to repeatedly squeeze (apparently for some indefinite period of time—until you get bored, I guess). Meanwhile, the priests discuss adolescent sexuality in remarkably frank terms, with many of them voicing concern about the possible deleterious effects of sweeping puberty under the rug, based in part upon their own inability to purge themselves of erotic longing. No idea whether it seemed as odd then as it does now that the film never once so much as suggests the possibility of child molestation—the men's urges are directed exclusively at adult women—and ultimately I find Schepisi's approach here a little too emphatic, often openly articulating what should be implicit. (Brother Francine's climactic diatribe about how much he despises life, railing against the mind's inability to maintain dominion over the body, is particularly ill-advised.) But it's so rare to see Christianity's take on the libido genuinely, affectionately interrogated, rather than either demonized or celebrated, that I can forgive the film its trespasses.

[Expires from the Criterion Channel on 1 May.]