Murmur of the Heart (1971, Louis Malle) (Patreon)

60/100

Second viewing, last seen ca. 1990–91 (during my original run through the canon while working at a video store). Can I just note right off the bat that this kid is fucking weird? That's not necessarily a bad thing—"What if someone in Barry Keoghan's alien register played the lead in an ostensibly naturalistic coming-of-age story?" is a question I'd have wanted to see answered, had you posed it to me last week—but Ferreux's long, discomfiting, blankly intense stare at key moments had me idly speculating about whether Laurent might be a future serial killer, which almost certainly wasn't Malle's intention. Frankly, it's not clear to me exactly what Murmur seeks to convey, though I do at least feel confident now that this is not a film "about" the Oedipus complex; the cynic in me wants to accuse Malle of baiting audiences with a salaciously controversial hook (it was the right era for that sort of thing), but the resolution's much too perverse for that to be likely. At the same time, though, when I try to perceive the film as a subtly scathing portrait of thoughtless privilege, depicting its characters' self-regard as literally incestuous, that reading keeps butting up against Malle's unmistakable semi-autobiographical affection (as refracted primarily through Laurent's older brothers). Immensely entertaining in a vacuum, the scene in which Dad and guests watch in horror as Marc slashes a Corot forgery (which his parents think is the actual canvas) undermines any hothouse atmosphere, encouraging us to cheer the boys' épater les bourgeois antics. It just feels to me as if Malle attempted to do two irreconcilable things at once. And one of those things definitely required a less creepily eccentric protagonist. 

(I would also have welcomed a performance by Lea Massari that didn't require most of her lines in French—i.e., most of her lines—to be poorly dubbed.)