Claude Chabrol's producer,Genovès ; his then-wife and favorite actress ,the subtle Stephane Audran ; the magical Delphine Seyrig ,her co-star in "le charme discret de la bourgeoisie" ;Maurice Ronet ; Eric Damain ,who was the star of a very good miniseries , "Jacquou le croquant" , the recent remake of which was a disaster. How could you be wrong with so many assets?
The director (debut) reveals himself incapable of mastering his harsh subject ;the screenplay is badly constructed : the beginning is really slapdash -in barely 20 minutes, the teenager 's first kiss, his parents neglecting him, the fall, the amputation , the wheelchair - ; it's extraordinary actors such as Audran and Ronet can be so johnny-one-note : it is as though the director had left them to their own devices ;it's impossible to believe this mother has to cope with a tragedy ; the episode with her lover is so irrelevant that the writers do not insist ; OK ,it's the selfish wealthy bourgeoisie , but it takes Chabrol 's talent to depict this milieu. Here the parents spoil their disabled boy with costly gifts ,the servants address a teenager as "vous" (a pronoun reserved for adults ),and that's it.
It was a harsh subject : a teenager on the threshold of his love life in a wheelchair,his sexual frustration, his rebellion against an unfair fate , his hatred for his parents, the pornography substitutes ,voyeurism ......Young Eric Damain has some good scenes ,but they are few and far between: blame it on the poor direction of a beginner who obviously wanted to make a daring, outrageous ,racy movie , and forgot all human emotion. Besides it was his first and last work .
