Based on Jean Cocteau's 1929 novel, and featuring Cocteau as an off-screen narrator, this is a melodrama with streaks of the fantastical characteristic of the writer's preoccupations with tortured sexuality, obsession, the world of dreams and predestination. Two sibling youths, brother and sister, live in a cocooned world of their private games, incessant back-biting and an interdependence that even an audience of the '50s could easily decode as incestuous. The death of their mother casts them out of their womb-like hovel into a barren palace of a new home, which, in conjunction with the arrival of a new pawn for their power games, eventually knocks their equilibrium off-kilter.
On the credit side, it generates a feverishly claustrophobic atmosphere in tune with the aimless and amoral fancies of its leads. Melville also translates Cocteau's singular visions to the screen with an assured flair. But it has also dated badly; the bickering of the emotionally stunted siblings is neither amusing or insightful after a while, and Cocteau's pseud blank verse in the narrative grates too, as adolescent as the youths whose maturity it purports to pass judgement on.
6/10
No comments:
Post a Comment