Poison Friends (2006) User Reviews

With writers like this who needs critics

[thecatcanwait · 6/10 · 20 June 2011]

ts like the junior cast from Ma Vie Sexuelle wandered in to this film.

They're pretending to be a small clique of literature grad students cum wannabe writers. But one bright spark amongst them – Andre Mornay – keeps putting them off. Mornay loathes writers. Probably cus he can't be one himself. But he's clever, even a bit erudite. A clever big head. He wants to be telling all his submissive acolytes what to do, i.e not to write, or be writers. He keeps quoting Karl Kraus ("Why do some write? Because they're too weak not to") as a way of arrogantly subjugating their creative aspirations to his controlling will.

If you're wearing the wrong kind of shoes he'll call them vile. Serving him coffee without sugar is pants. If you're scribbling away don't let him see or read it cus he'll dismiss it as "narcissistic cr-p" – and throw it in the bin (or delete it from your laptop, the sneaky git) Yes, he's a condescending tw-t all right. I could see that all the way along. I wonder why his friends didn't twig earlier. Too busy scribbling their narcissistic cr-p. And getting it published. Or too weakly characterised to stand up to him.

So when he gets his final comeuppance you can't – well, i couldn't – feel an iota of sympathy for him.

For such an apparently clever lad his lies and deceptions seem, at best farcically clumsy, at worst blatantly idiotic. A big flaw in the direction going on here. In need of a better screenplay. Lets ask one of his writer mates. They could make his phoniness more plausible. Or maybe they could just get rid of him completely. Simply write him out of the script.

THE MOLE for Young French Literati

[charlytully · 7/10 · 11 May 2008]

Imagine that the next episode of THE MOLE plopped a gaggle of cerebral contestants not in the confines of American suburbia, but smack dab in the middle of a Parisian university community. The mole's objective, of course, would be to sabotage any progress toward authentic art or human communication on the part of his\her student peers. This episode comes with a unique twist: none of the other contestants realize the possibility of the mole's existence.

Seeing a verbose Iago trying to snuff out any sniff at success on the part of classmates while expecting to receive laureate status via acclamation in LES AMITIES MALEFIQUES is one of the better film portrayals of self-delusion since NOTES ON A SCANDAL.

If this sounds interesting, don't bother waiting for an American remake. There is no cute kid part like MOSTLY MARTHA, no explosions as in LA FEMME NIKITA, and not as much creepiness as THE VANISHING. This one's likely to remain a Gallic exclusive.

Youthful indiscretion, adult failure

[Chris Knipp · 8/10 · 2 October 2006]

If I'm right that Alain-Fournier's Le Grand Meaulnes (The Wanderer) is still pivotal in French culture, the slightly disreputable bad-boy mentor remains an essential part of the myth of youth over there. And you'll enjoy Emmanuel Bourdieu's fast-paced, light, but biting study of a role model who crashed, so long as you accept the film's very French, Parisian, focus on getting ahead early in a small, competitive, celebrity-conscious, idea-smitten intellectual world. That's the world the good-looking Alexandre Pariente (Alexandre Steiger) enters when he walks into the Sorbonne literature class of famous writer-scholar Professor Mortier (Jacques Bonnaffé), straight off the train and carrying his suitcase. Alexandre and new arrivals Eloi Duhaut (Malik Zidi) and Edouard Franchon (Thomas Blanchard) are instantly impressed by André Mourney (Thibault Vinçon), who has the audacity to address this first class, speaking with enormous confidence (and some elegance) about the subject of writing.

Alexandre, Eloi, and Edouard become André Mourney's disciples. His theme is always that people only write because they are too weak to resist, and that they must have a good excuse for giving way to that weakness. André is really a terrible boor and ultimately disreputable: but he has more panache than the others, as that opening class showed. He turns out to be destructive, and a liar. A terrible liar. He steals the girl they all want, the librarian Marguerite (Natacha Régnier of Ozon's Criminel Lovers/Les amants criminels and Fontaine's How I Killed My Father/Comment j'ai tué mon père), telling Eloi to burn his love-note to her (because, of course, one should never write love-notes) and then moving in on her himself. He has a good effect on Alexandre, telling him he should really be an actor. That turns out to be true, and Alexandre has immediate success in the French classics. But André's pompous negativism leads Eloi to go out in the middle of the night and dump a novel he's written in the trash. Eloi's mother is a well-known, slightly crazy writer, Florence Duhaut (Dominique Blanc), so Eloi's understandably diffident. But André's influence on him is destructive.

It turns out that André is a protégé of Professor Mortier. But André's so busy pontificating among his peers, he neglects to work on his thesis. He tells Eloi to work on James Ellroy, and suggests there's a scholarship at Berkeley waiting for them both. When things go bad between Mortier and André, the latter leaves, pretending that he is going to an American university. This is the crucial moment when the others, who've been held together one way or another by André (even those among them André has been most abusive to), finally have to grow up and become independent. We already know by now what a rotter André has been. We've seen him open the beautiful Marguerite's laptop and delete a short story she has written. (Eloi finally replaces André in Marguerite's good graces by retrieving it).

Eloi is faced with a problem when he learns his mother has also retrieved his discarded novel, submitted it to her publisher faking his signature, and had it accepted. Eventually he allows it to be published, and it's a great success. He doesn't like his original title though. The new one is: Les Amitiés maléfiques (Poison Friends).

The young actors are all appealing. Malik Zidi will be remembered from Les Temps qui changent, Water Drops on Burning Rocks, and Place Vendome-- and will soon be seen in none other than Le Grand Meaulnes (a new version). The least known till now is Thibault Vinçon (André), whom the director spotted and admired for his "technical brilliance and sensitivity" at an acting workshop. Vinçon reappears at the end, and the way he conveys André's rapid transformation from rising star to instantly old raté (failure) is brilliant.

Bourdieu knows whereof he speaks: he is himself the son of a well known French intellectual and film figure. This is a smart and thought-provoking film whose classic theme doesn't prevent if from being fresh. A sterling choice by the festival jury of the Film Society of Lincoln Center for the 2006 New York Film Festival.

Dark and a bit off center, but quite interesting.

[nonsequitur247 · 16 April 2007]

Fascinating French film on a group of university students and their self-appointed leader, Mourney, who is a big fish in a small intellectual pond. He considers himself a supreme authority on writing - people only write, he says, because they are too weak not to. What begins as a strong, amiable friendship is rooted in Mourney's pompousness, jealousy, and competitive edge, which makes him lie and manipulate his friends to seemingly greater success than theirs. His lies, temper, and falseness leads to his demise, as each of his friends realizes his true nature, and escapes to independence and personal success. Very dark, shadowy, and cold feel to this movie. This was a great film, taking a close look at a character many people have known who is truly poisonous.

Brilliant and authentic artistic work

[chatbada · 10/10 · 8 October 2006]

I saw this movie yesterday and all I can say is that it is really intelligent, well performed, and the filming is also surprising because of a "Brechtian" way of reminding you that what you are seeing is a movie,not the reality...as if, the director wanted to tell you that he wouldn't deceive you. This picture is not only brilliantly written, with strong dialogs, and an intelligent story, it also has a Hitchcockien touch. But, be warned that it is not a film done in a way that one is used to. Finally, it moved me a lot from the beginning to its end. One of the best and original french movie of this year. Definitely a brilliant and authentic artistic work.

Ordinary world in a new light

[Vincentiu · 2 May 2007]

Delicate film about illusions and truth. About trust and self-introspection, about fiction, desires and social masks. About literature as spider web and structure of an age.

Nostalgic pledge for discover of reality's nuances, search of intellectual traps, definition of master and errors, appearances and compassion. The other like perfect prey of our mediocrity. Questions without answers and forms of refuge.

It is not a spectacular movie and the ethic circle is one of signs for French vision about social realities but the message, the acting, the lights and the shadows, atmosphere and the subtle end, ambiguous beginning and images of idol-victim, measure of gestures and skin of dialogs, tension and waiting, the carpet of lies and the fight between ambition and its instruments, obsessions and some words of books, self-legitimation and split dreams, taste of Dostoevsky's "The Possessed" makes a special occasion to look an ordinary world in a new light:small sins and vanities ashes.

Hypocritical, or merely brilliant but incompetent?

[HallmarkMovieBuff · 17 September 2010]

Professor's pet André Morney (Thibault Vinçon), an apparent apostle of Bohemian satirist Karl Kraus, kicks off this film by professing his contempt for writers and writing. This idea may hold interest for students and for adults who never left academia, but for many of us who left such questioning behind after graduation, in favor of more practical and relational pursuits, it merely bores. But hold on, it gets more interesting as the relationships between Morney and his disciples emerge.

Morney continues his pose throughout the film. Yet, as we learn later, when it comes to his own thesis, he can manage barely more than a first draft. Indeed, when his faculty adviser (Jacques Bonnaffé) threatens to drop him as an advisee, Morney resorts to mild violence to secure his diploma.

Meanwhile, Morney's diatribes against writing are so convincing that they prompt his friends and fellow students, Eloi (Malik Zidi) to toss away his manuscript for a novel, and Alexandre (Alexandre Steiger) to abandon writing altogether in favor of acting.

This all comes to a head after Eloi's mother, Florence Duhaut (Dominique Blanc), a successful writer herself, rescues Eloi's novel from the trash and submits it for publication without his knowledge. Upon discovering this, Eloi is ready to sue his mother, but eventually all is forgiven, and upon publication, Alexandre is the reader at Eloi's book signing.

But where is Morney? Off for a year at U. C. Berkeley, as supposed? Or not? And will he show up for the reading? As in a good college text book, one leaves the answers to these and other questions to the viewer.

All actors are good looking and perform well, but Natacha Régnier, in particular, spikes male interest as the beautiful librarian, Marguerite.