Murmur of the Heart (1971)

Tagline: Who Would Have Thought a Film About Incest Could Be So Warm, So Fresh and So Funny?

Louis Malle is one of my favorite directors but this was a let-down.

Laurent Chavalier (Benoit Ferreux) is fourteen going on fifteen.  He lives with his boring pedantic gynecologist father, his gorgeous free-spirited Italian mother, and his two older teenage brothers, who revel in playing mean pranks.  The children are basically allowed to run wild as the parents are absent for significant periods of time.  Laurent is the only scholar in the bunch

Laurent is on the cusp of manhood.  His brothers buy a prostitute for him but play a mean trick before the big moment.  Laurent makes some comically awkward advances on girls his own age with little success.  He is discovering the pleasures of pornography and monopolizes the bathroom.  Lauren also discovers that her mother is meeting a lover on the sly.

About halfway through the story Laurent is diagnosed with a heart murmur.  The treatment is bed rest followed by a month at a health spa.  Mom dotes on him during his illness.  She also spends a lot of time running around the house in her underwear.  Then they go to the spa together and are forced to share the same room. Laurent meets some girls with whom he flirts.  Then the lover shows up.  I’ll stop here.  The last two or three minutes of this film are golden.

I just don’t think spoiled brats and their mean-spirited mischief are very funny.  So I had the same problem with this as I did with Malle’s Zazie dans le metro (1960).  This movie is full of that kind of stuff.  When it focuses mostly on Laurent’s woman problems, it can be amusing and even insightful.  The incest is treated as well as it possibly could have, but it’s still kind of icky.  It’s a beautifully made film. I will give it that.

Louis Malle received an Oscar nomination for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay Based on Factual Material or Material Not Previously Published or Produced.