The Strange Ones

"Paul" (Edouard Dermithe) is a young man who comes off rather badly after a snowball fight; one finds it's mark necessitating a visit from their doctor who advises bedrest - on a pretty permanent basis! He is to be looked after by his sister "Elisabeth" (Nicole Stéphane) with whom he shares a room. What now ensues is a hybrid of the sibling and the marital as their love to hate to love relationship, bordering on the incestuous (but never actually more than bordering) evolves. Both characters are handsome to look at, there are undercurrents of homosexuality and depravity - moral, certainly, physical less so - but I have to say I found the whole thing just a bit on the sterile side. It's not that their relationship together, nor with the rather unattractive "Dargelos" (Renée Cosima) needed any sort of visual consummation - it doesn't; but there is little if any chemistry to raise this above a rather statically, though beatifically crafted, story of people who can't live with, or without, each other. i am certainly no expert on Cocteau on Melville, but I ought not to have to be - this film should be able to stand it's own merits, and for me it is just a rather extended, unremarkable family squabble, with occasionally pithy but all to frequently petulant dialogue that 70 years after lacks any real potency.

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