Les Cousins
Directed by Claude Chabrol
Written by Claude Chabrol and Paul Gegauff
1959/France
Ajym Films/Societe Francaise du Cinema pour la Jeunesse
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] La femme de ménage: Good Lord, look at this! Were you fighting?

Paul Thomas: This is Babylon, madam.[/box]

Two adjectives for this film are “disturbing” and “unrelenting”.  It might also be some kind of masterpiece.

Charles (Gerard Blain) is a serious law student from the provinces who lives to please his mother. Paul (Jean-Claude Brialy) is a law student and lives to please himself.  Paul is also rich and lives it up in a grand Paris apartment.  He invites Charles to live with him.  Charles finds that non-stop partying in the flat is not compatible with the non-stop studying he finds it necessary to do.

Another distraction soon appears in the shape of Florence, a city girl.  It is love at first sight  for Charles.  Florence will have to reform her wild ways to reciprocate but seems willing to try. Paul thinks the affair won’t work for either party and intervenes.  A love triangle and bad luck ensues.

As near as I can figure the message of this movie is “Life is unfair and there is nothing anybody can do about it”.  At least that’s what it had me believing by the end. Chabrol watches dry-eyed as the debauched city cousin destroys the happiness of his naive and earnest country kin.  This makes for a story and film I cannot love.

I admired it immensely however.  The psychology rings true.  Some of the shots are breathtaking.  The acting and score are fantastic.  This got under my skin and will remain in my memory longer than many more feel-good films have.  If you can get beyond a bleak story (with dashes of black humor) and some really unlikeable characters, I would go for it.

Trailer