They view it as a comedy with likable, mischievous adolescents groping towards enlightened adulthood, and a warm, good-natured mother, with sparks of anarchic, libertine fun to break up the steady stream of philosophical musings of a prodigious (and therefore charismatic, obviously) adolescent protagonist, destined to be the next Sartre or Camus. Set amongst the bourgeoisie class of 1954, it is not visually the flashiest of films but it just kind of has an objective, voyeuristic quality that is indispensable. However, this is one of the French films that remind me why I like being German. The two older sons are pranksters and brats, but the youngest is bookish and thoughtful. Directed by Louis Malle. The family discipline is administered by a very round, very muscular maid. His brothers are amoral and hysterical. 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). Review: Set in Dijon, France in 1954, Le souffle au coeur (Murmur of the Heart) concerns Laurent Chevalier (Benoît Ferreux), a jazz-loving, rebellious fifteen year old boy who clashes with his austere father (Daniel Gélin) but is doted on by his beloved, vivacious, sensual Italian mother, Clara (Lea Massari). Focusing on the relationship between a precocious 14 year-old boy and his sensuous and loving Italian-born mother, the film was ahead of its time in its honesty and straightforward approach to children's sexuality. The boy is intensely dis-likable, his brothers are sleazy, and mom is an undeveloped character. Murmur Of The Heart is an excellent example of the unique allurement of French cinema. They take adjoining rooms at the resort hotel, and then Malle sets us up for the final scenes so skillfully that the moment of incest, when it occurs, seems almost natural, more fond than carnal, and not terribly significant. 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. Only the French could have made a film like Murmur of the Heart, and only Malle in particular was daring enough to have made it with confidence, candor, wit. p.gurdulic Louis Malle succeeded in softening a movie about incest and sexual abuse with a tender desire for intimacy. Laurent is truly the film's most important character but his mother is definitely the most important figure in his life. : Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1: Anamorphic: Yes: Audio: French Dolby Digital 1.0 Monaural In the scene, mother and son snuggle and accidentally have sex. Louis Malle breaks taboos with a spontaneity that makes me as a viewer question if I've missed something growing up. The two movies deserve comparison in more ways than one. It casts a fresh, vigorous and unclouded eye on adolescence as it really is rather than as we would like it to be. That is NOT what this film is about. Murmur of the Heart is no exception, and like Au Revoir Les Enfants it possesses the paradoxical ability to both carry a redolence of classic French cinema whilst simultaneously existing as a timelessly pertinent and truthful work of film in its own right. His father could not be more uptight. 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? 9/10. Sort by: lesminho's rating of the film Murmur of the Heart. Murmur of the Heart - watch online: streaming, buy or rent . Murmur of the Hearts (Hong Kong Movie); 念念; Calling All Angels;Nian Nian; Siblings Yu Mei and Yu Nan were born on "Green Island" off the east coast The subject matter is what the repressed might reductively characterize as simple incest. Only in the movies can people "accidentally" have sex! Unconventional, yet thoroughly intriguing. But he's a bright, quiet, likable kid. May 03, 2020 22:44. We also have a good idea what that something might be as mother and child continue their social intimacies. Le Souffle au Coeur (Murmur of the Heart) The father is a wealthy and successful physician. | Never quite as light and fluffy as one might imagine the denouement, nevertheless, must have stunned audiences back in the day. However, considering this is from Louis Malle, who brought us the lovely story "Pretty Baby" (about an 11 year-old who works in a whorehouse and is the object of desire for an old freak), this movie didn't come as a total surprise. And yet "Murmur of the Heart" isn't really about the boy, but the mother. Parts of the plot are similarly difficult to embrace: girls his own age (15)answering his knock on their hotel room door late at night, and one inviting him in to spend the night (and the parents wouldn't know? When the fever leaves him with a heart murmur, Chevalier is placed in a sanatorium, along with his over-attentive and adulterous mother. Beware, though. The youngest son is taken by his brothers to a brothel (in order to be the victim of a cruel practical joke, as it turns out). Malle frequently used events from his own youth as inspiration for his fascinating coming-of-age films. The discovery of a heart murmur sends him and his mother to a distant spa, where fate and nature conspire toward a fleeting indiscretion. While sexuality is another theme in this classic film, there are touching scenes between the Laurent and his mother. Ratings & Reviews. 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! 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. Murmur of the Heart. 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. How he achieves this effect is beyond me; he takes the most highly charged subject matter you can imagine, and mutes it into simple affection. A mitral regurgitation murmur will radiate to the left axilla. Murmur of the Heart. Read and write album reviews for Murmur of the Heart (1971) - Louis Malle on AllMovie Don't you all get it?!? That's why I don't like this film. The Story of Who We Are: Gregory Nava Helps Celebrate Selena’s 50th Birthday, Thumbnails Special Edition: Gregory Nava's Selena, The Brilliance is in the Details of HBO’s Riveting Mare of Easttown. Metacritic Reviews. These latter people don't understand how, for example, a comedy could feature incest, and they wonder why they find it hard to like the characters. He smokes, drinks, masturbates, has sex with a whore, and even shares some crude moments with his older brothers, who are the influence that makes Laurent who he is. Ratings & Reviews. 1971, Drama/Comedy, 1h 58m. Sort by: p.gurdulic's rating of the film Murmur of the Heart. They punished my whole class Saturday. Murmur of the Heart, Louis Malles ode to youth and carelessness centers in on a young fourteen year old boy named Laurent. Sigmund Freud and the Oedipal Complex aside, this is just plain nasty! Murmur of the Heart is magnificently written and directed by Louis Malle and spotlights tremendous performances by Lea Massari as Clara Chevalier and Benoit Ferreux as her fragile son Laurent. This reviewer found Murmur of the Heart inoffensive and genuinely sympathetic to human behavior without regard to specific rules of morality. Therefore, when people use words like "beautiful" and "moving" to describe the film. I don't believe that's true. He is also at that sharp, poignant moment of midadolescence when it begins to seem that carnal knowledge is forever out of reach, but just barely. As with Malle's "Pretty Baby," issues of sexuality are handled without hangups, even if it involves children. The murmur of aortic regurgitation is best heard at the second and third left intercostal space due to the angle of the regurgitant flow through the aortic valve toward the left side of the heart. and his brothers, so funny! Murmur of the Heart review by M M - What a sweet mother. Film Review: ‘Murmur of the Hearts’ Sylvia Chang's first film in seven years is a moving drama of intergenerational conflict. The film stars Lea Massari, Benoît Ferreux and Daniel Gélin. The strange, ugly, and beautiful contradictions of familial intimacy. 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! On the other hand are the people who see the same thing, but are shocked and confused by things that strike them as, in fact, depraved and ugly. It's also existential without being particularly bleak, and humorous in spite of scenes that still shock decades after its release. I am perplexed. With Lea Massari, Benoît Ferreux, Daniel Gélin, Michael Lonsdale. FAQ 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. Effect on AS murmur : As the blood flow through aortic valve increases, the murmur increases in intensity. His two older brothers are not the sympathetic or kind older brothers to him especially. FOR Murmur of the Heart (1971) YOU CAN UPLOAD AN IMAGE SUBMIT A VIDEO OR MOVIE CLIP ADD ADDITIONAL INFORMATION WRITE YOUR OWN REVIEW TCM Messageboards Post your comments here ADD YOUR COMMENT> By contrast, a truly offensive early 70s film was The Harrad Experiment , an exploitative adaptation of a book about an experimental school in which kids were encouraged to be sexually active. It is natural for us Germans to envy our French neighbors for their style, for their "Savoir-vivre" and for their cinema. I finally had a chance to see it this week and it at least matched, if not exceeded, my expectations. 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. Y Tu Mama Tambien and Luna are much more insightful and honest, to me, and the acting by the main characters superb. It's definitely not about exorcising ghosts of the past but to let them regale us with stories of unforgettable youth. It's an uncommon family, especially by the standards of Dijon, France, circa 1954. Malle's film was controversial because it allegedly depicts a mother-son incestuous encounter in a positive light, but I'm wondering what film people have seen! He is married to a girl 15 years younger than himself and, worse, the girl is Italian, which profoundly shocked his French bourgeois family at the time of the marriage. Ratings & Reviews. 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