Murmur of the Heart (1971) User Reviews

Malle's finest....

[movedout · 9/10 · 9 October 2006]

It's high comedy. It's French bourgeois lifestyle. Louis Malle's delicate style of working with taboo subject matter reached a personal plateau with a dysfunctional household in "Murmur of the Heart", an early reach back into his own garden of memories and familial idiosyncrasies that he has stringently plucked from over the years. He approaches it with an innocent intent, cheeky, but still innocent nonetheless. Through the nostalgic and mean-spirited jibes at the domestic help, clergy and stiff-lipped crust of high society, it commences on a journey of an adolescent male, Laurent Chevalier (Benoit Ferreux) in Dijon, France circa 1954. He longs to break free to that stage of enlightened adulthood that seems just within reach but yet so very far. But within its pith, it's the very antithesis of melodrama. Taking on its inviolable subject matter's horns with both hands, it wrangles it to the ground while giving us something to think about. It's definitely not about exorcising ghosts of the past but to let them regale us with stories of unforgettable youth.

After 35 years, "Murmur of the Heart" still rings truer and closer to home than most contemporary comedies (and even dramas) revolving around the "coming of age" and "sexual awakening" in a young teen. It's also more daring and liberal in its construction of key family members being part of that very natural formation of sexual DNA and identity. They discuss philosophy. They discuss suicide. They discuss "The Story of O". Laurent and his 2 older brothers consort in disrespectfully petty behaviour contrary to what their upbringing holds sacred. Laurent's a top student, an intellectual that sees the world around him as a playground. It's a smalltime superiority complex as he defines his sensitive sensibilities with discernment beyond his years and a haughty disregard for divergent thoughts with a self-important air.

Revolving primarily about Laurent and his mother, Clara ("L' avventura's" Lea Massari), it's a refreshing look at a parental relationship based around adoration and fondness (coming under constant mocking by his brothers) than the contemporaneous and contemptuous notion of disdain and rebelliousness surrounding the authority figures and generational gaps. It underlines the idiom of a mother being her son's first love. In its essence, it encapsulates many complicated mother-child relationships including the emotional Oedipal issues that do crop up. And through that, a lovely parallelism is wrought with its interpretation of a woman who wants to be a girl and a boy who wants to be a man.

Conforming to an almost sitcom style, its self-dependent, autonomous scenes and situations just about start to border on farcical proportions. Its characters place sex and carnality high up on a pedestal, while Malle condescendingly films it as something so pedestrian and run-of-the-mill, not worth the hype and excitement over it anyway. He makes the patient, inevitable buildup to a key sex scene that had caused controversy when it was first released, to seem more natural and accepting than he does the sexual encounters that actually do seem the norm in society.

Coming of age in France

[dflynch215 · 9/10 · 29 August 2020]

Only Louis Malle could take such a delicate subject and create cinematic charm and humor. Malle frequently used events from his own youth as inspiration for his fascinating coming-of-age films. Murmur Of The Heart is an excellent example of the unique allurement of French cinema.

Magnificently Provocative

[thomas-laine · 8/10 · 26 April 2010]

La Soufflé au Cour really manages to make you question well-established values. Made in 1971 I can really imagine how it deranged the society and made the French film censure think twice before allowing it to be published. As a provocative film there's no doubt it's still timely. Louis Malle breaks taboos with a spontaneity that makes me as a viewer question if I've missed something growing up.

Malle seems to me to be above all a magnificent story-teller. There is no apparent message in La Soufflé au Cour, instead Malle let's the viewer make his own assumptions, based the deceptively realistic happenings and surroundings.

It's an unforgettable film, but watch out. You might be influenced by it.

not as light as I totally expected, but with enough life and vibrancy to keep it from being dark either

[Quinoa1984 · 10/10 · 25 November 2006]

I wonder what Freudians would think of the relationship between Laurent (Benoit Ferreux) and Clara Chevalier (Lea Massari), son and mother, who for half the film are basically on their own as the son gets treatment for a heart ailment. Maybe it's hard to think anything about this, or to put such an easy label as 'oedipal' on this whole psychological criss-cross. But what's hard to deny is how much liveliness is in possibly Louis Malle's best film (that I've seen yet at any rate). It's a tale of innocence lost, but then again in a family where it's not a high commodity anyway. Laurent is surrounded by older brothers who get him into parties with alcohol, and even to a brothel where he awkwardly loses his virginity. He also is a choirboy, does excellently in school, has an intellectual side that runs deep, and goes to confess his sins (from time to time) for the priest. But then there's something about his Mother, when he sees her get into a car he doesn't recognize or rides off with someone mysterious, that ignites his confused flame of first-hitting-puberty sexual jealousy. And it all leads up to Bastille day.

Murmur of the Heart is not a picture really bent on anything with a solid plot, as it's more concerned with the kind of European 'character study' (not that there isn't a story there to look at it). I read Ebert's review and he mentioned that the picture is more about the mother than the son. I could see where that viewpoint comes from, but I have to think that it's more about both of them, and while I watched it (as opposed to now thinking about it once its ended) it seemed more concerned with the son and perpetually through his point of view. He doesn't totally understand why his mother feels the way she does, and why she runs off to her other man, torn between leaving her gynecologist husband for him. But Malle makes it seem torn between each side when Laurent is left at the hotel while Clara is away for two days. His confusion leads him into a kind of disarray that's been hinted at before, and its made all the more clear in the tension- very underneath their games and witty remarks- that builds up.

But even with such an idea for the film, it is never really ugly or trashy. If anything, Malle does the best thing possible by making such a taboo subject realistic around the situation of family and the period. It's really wonderful seeing how Malle directs the smaller scenes, the bits that a director usually wouldn't bother with for emotional sake, or the little bits of dialog that do go on in the real world that don't necessarily have to do much with the rest of the story (one of those is when Laurent is getting washed down with a hose at the medical clinic, and the woman washing him goes on a long tangent of talk, not conversationally, just to hear herself talk). It could be tricky dealing with such mundane aspects of life such as brothers hanging out and goofing off, but there's layers of masculinity that get thrown in the mix (what are we to make of when the boys measure 'themselves' with a ruler, much to the angry housekeeper's dismay, or when Laurent tries out her mothers make-up I wondered).

All the while Malle bases these characters in an entirely plausible environment and with a cast that works very well. Massari is almost TOO alluring a woman to be anyone's mother, least of which the headstrong and vulnerable Laurent, but this works to show what her frame of mind must be too, as she gets as much attention (in a different way of course) as Laurent does from the teenage girls. The actor playing Laurent is a first-timer here ala Leaud in 400 Blows, but I even got a Bresson feeling from him, of there being a lot of emotions buried underneath his usually calm and poised expression, the kind that can be felt even with just the slightest hints. He's perfect for the kind of kid who's still a bit much in his own desires and wants to see what may happen from all of this in the long term. But the psychological implications are left even more to chance by the ending, which is one of the best moments Malle has ever directed as the family all laughs together. Not to forget to mention another big plus, the film is filled with one of the best jazz soundtracks ever put together (including Parker, Bechet, Gillespie among others), and an exquisite use of period and very tasteful way about the more 'graphic' parts of the film. Murmur of the Heart shows in tragic-comic detail the sophistication and lewd sides of the French, and draws a lot to ponder about a boy's crossover in that rotten period of 14-15 years old and of a woman who has the same mixture of unstable emotions and child-like ideals of her own blood that pull the two into what happens. In totally unconventional terms, it's 'magnifique'. A+

Sophisticated naughtiness.

[epat · 10/10 · 30 March 2006]

This is one of my all-time favorite films.

Young Laurent Chevalier, his mother & his roguish elder brothers break every taboo known to small-town 1950s Dijon: underage drinking, underage sex, blasphemy, incest, petty theft, adultery, art forgery, whoremongering, drunk driving... What more can you ask? Malle treats their escapades with such lighthearted sympathy & wit you can't help liking them.

Before I first saw Soufflé au Coeur, I read a blurb for it in the monthly listings of my local repertory cinema that ran something like this (I quote from memory): "This film does a lot to restore the French to their former reputation for sophisticated naughtiness." I can't sum it up any better than that.

A Masterpiece.

[Bobbbbbbbb · 11 December 2003]

'Murmur of the Heart' is an experience that sneaks up on you like the combined years of one's youth. The subject matter is what the repressed might reductively characterize as simple incest. That is NOT what this film is about. It is about the elastic moment of adolescence. The strange, ugly, and beautiful contradictions of familial intimacy. A boy deperate to taste the pleasures of being a man - while stuck in an awkward inbetween physical, and pyschic geography. This is one of the strongest films in all of French cinema.

Coming of Age Story with Oedipus Complex

[claudio_carvalho · 7/10 · 4 December 2010]

In 1954, in the Spring, the fourteen year-old boy Laurent Chevalier (Benoît Ferreux) lives with his Italian mother Clara Chevalier (Lea Massari); his father, the gynecologist Charles Chevalier (Daniel Gélin); and his teenager brothers Thomas (Fabien Ferreux) and Marc (Marc Winocourt) in an upper-class neighborhood in Dijon. Laurent is fan of jazz, and Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie are his favorite musicians. He also likes to read Proust and other prominent writers. Laurent is very close to his mother and he discovers that she has a lover named Jacques. However, Charles ignores his younger son. Thomas and Marc take Laurent to a brothel but while having his first intercourse, he is interrupted by his drunken brothers. When the doctor finds that Laurent has a murmur in his heart, he suggests that the boy should go to Bourbon-les-Eaux to heal and Clara stays with him in the same room. Along the days, Laurent befriends the teenagers Helene (Jacqueline Chauvaud) and Daphne (Corinne Kersten); on the Bastille Day, Jacques dumps Clara and she celebrates the holiday with Laurent. They drink a lot and when they return to their room, they have an incestuous relationship.

"Le Soufflé de Couer" is a coming of age story with Oedipus complex of a young boy in France in the 50's. The story of Louis Malle is politically incorrect in accordance with the present standards of Hollywood but absolutely acceptable in 1971, the year of "Summer of 42". The fourteen year-old boy has an incestuous relationship with his mother; is molested by a priest; smokes; drinks; shoplifts; has sex with prostitute; cheats; drives reckless on the road with his brothers, but all the situations are credible and developed very naturally. The sexual tension between Laurent and Clara is present from the beginning to the end and Lea Massari is extremely beautiful and sexy. The first half is quite pointless but the second half is a very provocative film. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "O Sopro do Coração" ("A Murmur in the Heart")

Moving, controversial but lovable film

[Sylviastel · 9/10 · 13 September 2004]

Louis Malle perhaps has directed his most controversial film about Laurent and his complicated relationship with his mother. Because he is the youngest of three boys, he is still a virgin and coddled like the family baby. The film seems to last forever but in a beautiful moving way. We watch as his beautiful Italian vivacious mother seems to attract admirers even her own son. Without discussing the film's oedipal issues, the film has some very pleasant scenes and some that are not so pleasant. Maybe Malle is trying to bring reality of a young body's sexuality. His two older brothers are not the sympathetic or kind older brothers to him especially. Laurent is truly the film's most important character but his mother is definitely the most important figure in his life. As he comes of age, she has to grasp with losing him to another woman, the inevitable outcome of any mother-son relationship. We learn a lot about Laurent's mother too in this film. While sexuality is another theme in this classic film, there are touching scenes between the Laurent and his mother. As he finds himself attracted to other women, he becomes daring, insulting and even unlikable. I won't give away the ending of this film. But it's worth watching even today more than 30 years later, I cannot believe it's older than me. It seems like it could have been done today and that's why it's a classic film.

Breaking taboos.

[rmax304823 · 7/10 · 27 September 2006]

A French film about the relationship between a teen-aged boy (Ferreux) and his mother (Massari). Well, I guess more generally it is about Ferreux' coming of age, a kind of Bildungsfilm, because other characters play a part in his development -- a girl his age, a priest and tutor, and so forth.

Ferreux and Massari are a little closer, a little more playful together than a boy and his mother should be, and there are little warnings along the way that his budding sexuality is budding in what most people would consider not quite the right direction. The bud bursts into bloom at the end but nobody seems to care very much. Massari says it was a sacred and secret moment but will never happen again. And one supposes that afterward Ferreux takes off after that winsome blonde of his own age rather than rifling through his mother's underwear.

The performances are fine. Man, Ferreux looks as if he might have grown into that English actor who played James Whale in "Gods and Monsters" but whose name escapes me. It will come to me sooner or later but too late to use it here. The story of my life -- we'll call it "Plus Tarde." He's a pretty good actor for such a young kid. Totally natural, though a bit serious. Listens to Charlie Parker, of whom we hear a few shards during the story. Whew, what blistering runs, what genius.

Lea Massari is just about the right age and temperament for her role. She was a lot more dangerous before she disappeared in "L'Avventura," with her fulgurating sexuality. Here she's matter of fact about things, candid in her discussions with her son, clips his toe nails for him, sings happily while accompanying herself on the guitar, shrugs everything off. I think this is called "savoir-faire". It's kind of like having a constitutional Prozac-generator. She's just old enough for the part but has lost none of her foxy edge.

The priest senses something may be a little bent but his warning hints go unregarded. There are no moments of high drama. Nobody seems to worry too much about anything. Maybe it's the Dijon mustard in their diet, but whatever it is we should all have more of it. A genuinely good-natured movie about taking things just seriously enough -- not too little and not too much. Bird plays under the closing credits, a thoroughly apt petit cadeau.

Enjoy it.

Marvelous Malle

[kenjha · 8/10 · 9 April 2006]

Touching coming-of-age story focuses on the youngest of three sons of a French gynecologist and his wife in Paris in the 1950s. Malle does a wonderful job of showing the relationships between the family members, helped by fine acting by all, particularly Massari as the beautiful mother and Ferreux as the gawky 15-year old son. As with Malle's "Pretty Baby," issues of sexuality are handled without hangups, even if it involves children. It is well known that one of the central themes of this film is incest but rather than being disturbing or exploitative, it is presented in a surprisingly tender manner without being judgmental.

still overshadowed by controversy

[mjneu59 · 7/10 · 9 December 2010]

Only in France would an otherwise typical coming-of-age comedy lead up to a tender moment of incest, and perhaps only Louis Malle could have filmed it with such grace, tact, and good humor. The director's adolescent alter-ego is a gangly, jazz-happy son of a wealthy gynecologist, teased by his two older brothers, coddled by his cosmopolitan young mother, and suspicious of his father confessor's less than spiritual attentions. The discovery of a heart murmur sends him and his mother to a distant spa, where fate and nature conspire toward a fleeting indiscretion. But because Malle takes the time to establish his characters, and does so with such obvious affection, the moment is not as racy or obscene as it sounds. Curiously, the young hero's growing pains are also linked to his country's problems in Indochina, so is it any wonder, with the adult world in such turmoil, that a boy would rebel against the conventional wisdom of his elders?

a beautiful coming of age story

[zetes · 9/10 · 30 June 2001]

There have been a million coming of age stories in the history of the world, most of them probably in the film medium. What a pathetic thing to have to endure something as trite as the American film American Pie when something like The 400 Blows exists. Murmur of the Heart will remind most of that classic, and, akin to French films such as Zero for Conduct, The 400 Blows, and Malle's own Au Revoir Les Enfantes, it is excellently acted, both by the adults in the film and the children (here, though, they're teens), and it is infinitely more truthful than most American films of the same genre. Murmur of the Heart falls just short of The 400 Blows, but it is a worthy successor to it. Beware, though. This film's main theme is sexuality, and there are some very disturbing scenes, even thought the mood of the film is quite light-hearted. 9/10

Adolescence, coming of age film

[moviesknight · 7/10 · 30 December 2021]

Adolescence and growing up, the french mother who is much closer to the children than their older father. French people have already broken all the norms they have, and to put it delicately can be done by very few. Whether you agree on that is a different topic. Gets unpleasant at many moments. The scenes where it could go bizzarely out of hand were dealt nicely. Making this in 1971 is still a feat none the less.

Very disappointing

[Felix-28 · 4/10 · 26 December 2008]

I bought the Criterion DVD edition of this film, having been an admirer of Louis Malle for a long time, and having heard that this was one of his very best films. I thought that if it was as good as Pretty Baby, Atlantic City, Damage, Vanya on 42nd Street - I could go on - then it would be worth waiting for (not to mention the high price).

Well, it's not. I didn't like the way the film began, and although I kept expecting it to click into gear and improve, it never did.

The rather anarchic household was tedious and not nearly as funny as it was no doubt intended to be; but that's not the real problem.

The boorish elder brothers deserve a slap in the chops; but they're not the real problem either.

The three brothers' obsession with sex is overdone, though not greatly so if I remember my own adolescence correctly; that's not the real problem either.

And neither is the relentless "free-spiritedness" of the intensely irritating mother, although it certainly doesn't help the film.

No, the real problem is the supposed resolution of what passes for a plot. Mother gets drunk, son undresses her, falls into bed with her and passion overwhelms them. Yeah, right.

And then mother sobers up enough to have some deep and meaningful words with son about remembering and cherishing their secret moment of passion. And son says of course. Yeah, right.

And then son slips out of bed, tiptoes down the hall, tries (but fails, in the one faintly believable scene in this ridiculous sequence) to rape one of the two sympathetic characters in the whole film (the other being the nice prostitute at the brothel), and moves on to spend the night with another girl, a willing one this time. As if.

And finally, when he creeps back to his own room the next morning and finds his father and brothers there, fully clothed while his mother's still in just a dressing-gown, the film ends with everybody laughing.

I've got nothing against sex, nothing against nudity, I love French films and I respect and admire Louis Malle. But this film misses the mark completely. As a comedy it is without a laugh in it from beginning to end. And the plot is so ridiculously unbelievable that if there's supposed to be some insight in the film, it is entirely lost.

Why I don't like this film

[kleiner_fuchs · 20 August 2005]

It is natural for us Germans to envy our French neighbors for their style, for their "Savoir-vivre" and for their cinema. However, this is one of the French films that remind me why I like being German. Although I admire French cinema (my list of favorites contains much more French than German films) and although I really liked the US-produced "Pretty Baby" of the same director, "Le Soufflé au coeur" was annoying and made me angry. With its "C'est-la-vie"-attitude it seems to say that life (and love) is a game, and nothing really matters, not even sleeping with your mother. I don't believe that's true. You may make a film that lets you laugh about life and the foolish things that people do. But ultimately life is a serious matter. An artist denying that fact is a liar. That's why I don't like this film.

delightful, funny, touching classic

[dlevitt-1 · 10/10 · 5 October 2005]

Laurent is the youngest, smartest, most sensitive of three boys in a wild bourgeois French family. His brothers are amoral and hysterical. His father could not be more uptight. And his mother is full of laughter, beautiful and irresistible.

The brothers drink, steal, and even replace a valuable original painting just so they can watch their father's reaction when they casually start cutting it to pieces during dinner.

This is the ultimate French counterculture movie. Somehow the way Laurent pleases himself with books and bebop recordings is simultaneously sophisticated and innocent.

The Charlie Parker score is mesmerizing. Some people won't get it. Others will find it evokes everything wonderful about growing up and discovering yourself.

A place in my heart

[gizmomogwai · 10/10 · 13 July 2014]

A French coming-of-age comedy-drama I've known by reputation, Murmur of the Heart (1971) by Louis Malle has been on my must-watch list for what feels like a long time now. I finally had a chance to see it this week and it at least matched, if not exceeded, my expectations. Supposedly, Malle claimed it as a semi-autobiography- quite a thing to acknowledge when his protagonist, a stand-in for himself, goes to bed with his own mother!

Murmur of the Heart follows the French boy Laurent, almost-15. A precocious intellectual, he reads, gets good grades and is described by his mother as very sensitive. His mother, Clara, is sort of an opposite, an Italian anti-intellectual who never went to school and doesn't vote. Despite this, Laurent and Clara share a bond, and she is more like a friend to her three sons than a mother.

Much of the glimpses into the Chevalier household are slice of life, feel authentic and have real humour to them. Things like the spinach tennis are hilarious; the boys also pull an outrageous prank, switching a priceless painting with a copy they demolish in front of their parents. They're mean to their servants, but this has a sort of dark comic value as well.

The film reaches its special status when Laurent falls ill and gets a heart murmur. After his mom cares for him and sings him songs, they check into a hotel where a misunderstanding leads to them sharing a bedroom. Laurent has recently been pushed into losing his virginity by his brothers, and Clara is a real babe. The Oedipal sexual tension between the two becomes apparent and delicious. Their friendly banter turns to talk about sex, she walks around in her underwear, and they talk about her affair, which she ends. At one point, he spies on her in the bathtub. Clara has such an amazing shape that this is a truly beautiful moment. You almost want them to make love. After a night of heavy drinking, Laurent does go from momma's boy to motherlover- but this happens sort of accidentally, innocently. The film doesn't exactly endorse it- Clara says it'll never happen again- but she also tells him not to regret it, an interesting perspective. Immediately after, he goes to search for a girl his own age, moving on and realizing his sexual identity.

Murmur of the Heart, while maybe appearing sleazy, has heart- honesty, humour, life, and two loving and usually-sympathetic protagonists. This is a rather perverse piece but beautiful in its own way, and is not to be missed.

MURMUR OF THE HEART (Louis Malle, 1971) ***

[Bunuel1976 · 7/10 · 2 September 2006]

Seven years before PRETTY BABY (1978), Malle directed another controversial film about the sexual awakening of a precocious teenager - in this case, a boy. As with the later film, Malle's elegant handling - suffused with feeling and humor, even irreverence - brings no portentous message and certainly no sensationalism to this theme (which culminates in an incestuous relationship between the boy and his attractive, middle-aged mother!). Even so, the complicity that goes on here between the boy and select members of his family seems to me to be wishful thinking on Malle's part (who also wrote the script) more than anything else: the boy's sexual initiation is organized by his promiscuous elder brothers and, apart from the mother-son "liaison" - which happens when she's intoxicated and is, in any case, shot in the dark and quite sensitively handled by all concerned - he's compliant of her various affairs, which actually brings him to confess to her that he never loved his father and consequently doubts his own parentage!

The acting by the entire cast - veterans and newcomers alike - is wonderful; still, watching professionals like Lea Massari (in perhaps her most important role apart from the girl who goes missing in Antonioni's L¡¦AVVENTURA [1960]), Daniel Gelin (who has aged quite a bit from his 50s heyday!), Michel Lonsdale (as a potentially paedophile priest!) and Ave Ninchi (as the children's long-suffering, heavy-set Italian maid) is especially gratifying. The score by several jazz performers, including Charlie Parker, provides perfect accompaniment to the film.

The only extra on the stand-alone Criterion release (it's also available as part of a 4-Disc Set with two other Malle films which revolve around children - LACOMBE LUCIEN [1974] and AU REVOIR, LES ENFANTS [1987]) - is the film's theatrical trailer which, amusingly, manages to incorporate in its publicity several of the most famous titles of the French New Wave!

Great film to watch with your mother

[colindrayton · 9/10 · 9 May 2020]

You'll love watching this film with your mother as the film goes deep into the mother son relationship and the film will make you question and deeply think about what you should and shouldn't be doing with your mother. I highly recommend this film to young men like myself to watch it with their mother, my mum loves me even more as a sweet result of watching this very sexy movie and my sperm cry out for some soothing motherly affection every time I watch this masterpiece of a movie. I was a bit disappointed with the sex scene at the end though, I the ending sex video would be more like an adult sex video but this film is still totally worth watching.

The Wrongs of Passage?

[ThurstonHunger · 7/10 · 26 August 2007]

Les Fleurs du Malle? Deflower power? Le White Punks on Cognac?

I suspect the French savor a scandal better than us Americans. For me this film was an interesting one, but might have been far more powerful with just a whiff of its forbidden fragrance? Eau d'affaire? In a way, I wanted the film to lean more towards licentiousness rather than lasciviousness.

Juvenile sex confusion is less alien to me than some of the notions of the bourgeoisie. Of course I understand the concept and am aware of the historical disgust tossed by the "true" sophisticates at the cheaper rich. Isn't the last name of the family in this, Chevalier, somehow connected to the idea of class and nobility?

A rigid sense of privilege just doesn't resonate well in California these days. But then neither do rites of passage, and that might be a big mistake for us. We've got teenagers in their thirties, and parents who want to be the kids' best pals...so that aspect in this film connected well.

The introductory scene of Clara with her sons is an energetic one, and immediately a playful, loose and even oddly sexy relationship is established. Whereas the free jazz featured in this film has aged very well, such freedom in the family order doesn't quite hit the right notes in my opinion. An ever-humbling opinion...as a father of five-year old twin boys.

So while I'll take even more freedom in my jazz, I'd prefer less in the latitude granted to the next generation. The film revolves around the relationship of mother and son, and Lea Massari was a revelation as the mother whose youth remains irrepressible. Meanwhile Benoit Ferreux has the tougher role. Not only is this his debut, he's the stand-in for Malle's remembrances evidently. On top of that he has to do this as a fifteen year-old playing a fifteen year-old written with an apparently much older soul.

I think the compassion/conflict of the son for his mother is true, agonizing and often beautiful here...but in watching the trailer for this film that came with the DVD, I almost wonder if Malle felt a need to take his memoirs and season them with something a bit more salacious? Something stronger than the salicylate remedy prescribed.

Peer pressure of French teen films??

Smaller things made this film even more enjoyable

1) the title alone, and the reason why Laurent and mother wind up at the hotel together

2) the camp scene, where we sense Laurent wants to atone for the absent father in his life

3) the forgery, and in general the rabid rebellion of the two elder hellion

4) the parallel scene of Laurent "catching" his father (a gynecologist) with a woman in a state of undress to later set against his mother's infidelity

6.5/10 Thurston Hunger

Boys will be boys.

[brogmiller · 8/10 · 4 June 2020]

'Loosely' based on aspects of his own adolescence this is Louis Malle's eighth feature although he refers to it as 'my first film'. Hard to believe that this is in fact the first that he has written on his own. One of Malle's strengths is his sense of place and period and we are totally convinced that we are in France of the 1950's. He has created a wonderful portrait of a bourgeois family comprising Charles, a gynaecologist, his Italian wife Clara and three sons, the youngest of whom, Laurent, is particularly close to his mother. It is such a pity that the film acquired the title 'Dearest Love' as the original title 'Murmur of the Heart' not only refers to Laurent's medical condition but also subtly alludes to his feelings for his mother. These feelings lead to an act of incest which is beautifully directed by Malle and seems a perfectly natural development in their relationship. This is certainly Malle's most joyous film and he has drawn the best from his cast. Clara's character is written as an irresistible free spirit and is played to perfection by Lea Massari. Benoit Ferreux is just right as the adolescent whose hormones insist on throwing their weight about and the excellent Daniel Gelin makes the most of a rather dour role as Charles. Michel Lonsdale does a marvellous turn as a touchy-feely Catholic priest! It is nigh on impossible not to be enchanted by this film which serves as a reminder that incest should be kept in the family!

Fascinating Malle autobiography

[sgmi-53579 · 7/10 · 5 March 2022]

Malle's semi autobiographical film is consistently watchable and entertaining. Nakedly honest in it's portrayal of adolescent life. Would probably be shocking, even to modern American audiences. Done with great artistic flair, and very French. Oh la la.

Essentially light but ultimately rather heavy

[christopher-underwood · 8/10 · 31 March 2019]

Essentially light but ultimately rather heavy domestic drama involving an overly motherly mother and a child pushed this way and that by her and his two older brothers. The early scenes in the rich folks household, I assume, are intended to be amusing but looked at today the bullying of servants looks pretty shameful especially with the ongoing background news of French involvement in 'Indo China'. On the other hand the film skips along very nicely and although not a lot happens at first, the film is very well shot and we are always aware that something is going to happen. We also have a good idea what that something might be as mother and child continue their social intimacies. The sexy mum is played by Lea Massari who was the girl who went missing in L'Avventura ten years before and she performs well here, as does the young lad, who seems to be able to do no wrong, played by Benoit Ferreux. Never quite as light and fluffy as one might imagine the denouement, nevertheless, must have stunned audiences back in the day.

Woah that took dark turn

[alansabljakovic-39044 · 6/10 · 6 May 2020]

I really liked the first part of the movie, it felt like another really great coming of age story from Malle but then the second part of the movie came up and it really shocked me. It was unpleasant to watch and almost terrifying to watch, also our lead character becomes unlikeable which made it even harder for me to keep watching it. I wish I enjoyed it more, maybe it will get better on rewatch.

Coming of Age Was Never Like This

[disinterested_spectator · 5/10 · 25 April 2015]

Laurent is an obnoxious fourteen-year-old boy who has two brothers almost as obnoxious as he is and a father who is not bad in the obnoxious department himself. He also has a mother, Clara, who seems to be a nice, warm-hearted, loving person. She needs to ditch that family, but when she gets the chance to run off with her lover, who is just as obnoxious as her family, I guess she figures, "What's the point?"

Because Clara is so affectionate and sensual, and because she and Laurent end up having to stay in a hotel room together, we quickly figure out that we are being prepared for a little oedipal hanky-panky. Now, in a movie in which a boy has sex with his mother, we figure one of two things will happen: either he will turn into some kind of Norman Bates psycho, or the incestuous affair will be a deep, meaningful, transformative experience for the lad. Since the movie is French, I anticipated the latter. I assumed that as a result of his having sex with his mother, he would stop being obnoxious and start being nice, warm-hearted, and loving, just like her. Nope. By the end of the movie, he is still his same old rotten self.

Before they have sex, his mother says that they will just do it one time, and then they will never talk about it again. Oh sure. For all her worldly experience, she does not seem to know much about men. You can't give them a taste and expect them to go away and forget about how good it was. She had a husband who was very jealous when they were first in love, and she had a lover who was very jealous, and now she thinks her son won't end up being a jealous lover too? Of course, the movie indicates that they will forget about the fact that they had sex, because Louis Malle, the writer and director, wanted it that way. But it's not realistic, so don't try this at home.

Not that I would know personally, but I suspect that having sex with your mother would be enough excitement for one evening. But as soon as Clara falls asleep, Laurent gets dressed and heads on down the hall for little action with someone his own age. He wakes up one girl, propositions her with his usual obnoxious manner, and when she runs him off, he heads on down the hall to the next one, where, for some mysterious reason, he actually succeeds.

In a time when gender equality is the ideal, the double standard regarding the sexes is looked upon with disfavor. This movie makes us realize that in some respects, the double standard will never be completely eliminated, nor should it. Just imagine a similar movie, but one in which a man has sex with his fourteen-year-old daughter, which the movie would have us regard as being a meaningful act of love. I say imagine it, because you know darn well you will never see such a movie.

Finally, because Laurent is Catholic, I could not help trying to imagine how his next confession is going to go. I wonder how many Hail Marys you have to say for having sex with your mother.