“The Lovers” (1958)
Jeanne Moreau and Louis Malles would work together four times in their career, and while thei for the moody noir “Elevator To The Gallows” (see above) is their best known collaboration, Moreau is no less striking in the sensual and erotic “The Lovers.” Based on the novel “Point de Lendemain” by Dominique Vivant, Moreau stars as Jeanne Tournier, a bourgeois woman bored with her life and marriage, who essentially rediscovers human love through adultery and an illicit affair with Jean-Marc Bory. Naturally, this controversial sentiment scandalized on release (even more so when the heroine’s eye wanders beyond her new lover) and the frank depiction of sexuality (at least for its time), was seen as obscene (in fact, a landmark obscenity case was overturned by the United States Supreme Court when a theater owner was convicted for screening the movie; the suggestion of cunniligus in one scene is downright sexy). Seductive, luminously shot (with beautifully rendered day-for light sequences) and deeply felt, while the conviction that a good lay can positively change the outlook of one’s life didn’t sit with the puritanical, the picture is still as sharp and compelling today as it must have been to shocked audiences in the late ‘50s. Moreau turned into a genuine star after the picture was released. The film won the Special Jury Prize and was nominated for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1958.
“Murmurs of The Heart” (1971)
Charming, sweet, funny and fondly told, ultimately, Malle’s ninth feature-length drama is perhaps one of the most loving and yet controversial and fucked up family values/sexual awakening films on record. An endearing coming-of-age drama, the picture centers on a precocious teenage boy growing up in bourgeois surroundings in post-World War II France, and chronicles his relationship with his paterfamilias as the youngest in a family of five. His stuffy, intellectual gynecologist father believes he’s a pest, his twisted, faux-sophisticated older brothers are constantly harassing him and his enabling, Italian trophy-wife mother (Lea Massari) dotes on him like a baby even though he yearns for his own voice and independence. We watch young Laurent (Benoît Ferreux) steal jazz records (Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker tunes feature throughout), masturbate to erotic literature, measure cocks with his brothers, torture the family’s cooks and seethe when he witnesses his mother having an affair: many of the various difficulties and struggles of youth. But a heart murmur lands Laurent in a sanatorium away from his family and eventually into a sexual encounter with his far-too-loving mother. That the tone is so sweet and jovial right up until it takes this turn is perhaps one of the most uncomfortable elements of the film (at least on paper). Yet even then, the easy-going picture pulls it off, managing not to alienate or repulse the audience, but instead leaving them maybe just a little puzzled (thinking, “Jmm, so that’s how they do it in their family?”). As shocking and controversial as much of it sounds, ‘Murmurs’ is a tender, graceful and effortless picture that wonderfully captures the nostalgia and innocence of an adolescence most of us can relate to — minus those awkward hook-up years with the parents, of course.
