There is a reason most films only have one director. Sure, there are exceptions like The Coen Brothers or Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, but these partners are known for their like-minded sensibilities. If a film has multiple directors and they don’t agree, that can create an identity crisis or unresolved tension. That feeling is at the center of Les Enfants Terribles, a film that lists Jean-Pierre Melville as the only director, but might as well have been co-directed by Jean Cocteau. You may recall Cocteau – who wrote the source novel for the film – is also an accomplished director (he made the sumptuous 1946 adaptation of The Beauty and the Beast). This film may not have the staples of Melville’s later work, yet it unfolds like a bizarre psychological thriller on the verge of self-destruction. It does not always hold together, but when it does, it is electrifying.
The opening section is noteworthy because it is completely unlike the rest of the film. Melville opens outside a boy’s school, where a group of teenagers have a passionate snowball fight. It is beautifully filmed in deep focus, a riot of youthful exuberance, at least until Paul (Édouard Dermit) gets nailed in the chest. This sends him into a state – the film suggests it was a rock covered in snow – but the subsequent emergency has little basis in medical reality. Perhaps it was all pretense so Paul’s sister Élisabeth (Nicole Stéphane) could collect him and tend to his needs. If the opening section is about the expansive possibility of the youth, the rest of Les Enfants Terribles unfolds like a catastrophic chamber piece. Sure, Paul and Élisabeth go through the motions of young adulthood – including marriage and homeownership – except they only really have room for their own obsession with each other.
On top of providing the source material, Cocteau narrates the story of Paul and Élisabeth’s toxic, co-dependent relationship. His voice-over is a constant source of commentary, to the point where the subtext is how Melville and Cocteau fight for control of the film. Perhaps his syntax sounds more poetic in the original French, except in this film he over-explains an image or a feeling, as if he does not trust Melville’s camera to convey any meaning. Sometimes there are two films unfolding at once: Cocteau’s animated picture book, and Melville’s desire for more realistic/physical action. Les Enfants Terribles brims with erotic subtext – it is entirely likely Paul and Élisabeth had a sexual life off-camera – except Cocteau would rather keep things precious and unspoken.
Dermit and Stéphane dominate every scene, and true to the film’s title, they are insufferable. Equal parts frail and contemptuous, Paul throws a hissy fit for the entire film, veering between being complicit in and unaware of Élisabeth’s scheming. Stéphane’s performance is much more seductive because she implies more than shows: it is never quite clear what she wants, even in the melodramatic final minutes, and there is single-minded passion to her performance that ultimately proves to be the narrative center. While Stéphane did not go on have many major film roles – an accident stymied her career – her performance here helps make Les Enfants Terribles unclassifiable. Like Last Year at Marienbad, it borrows from other genres like thriller and drama, yet remains dialed into its own unique frequency.
Unlike Melville’s later existential thrillers, Les Enfants Terribles has limited interest/influence beyond auteur completists. It is too weird, too settling to serve as much else beyond a proto-entry in the French New Wave. But one film owes a lot of its DNA to Les Enfants Terribles, and that is Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers. It is also a psycho-sexual chamber piece between brother and sister, with an outsider who serves as an observer of their descent into madness (Paul and Élisabeth’s friend Gérard (Jacques Bernard) serves a similar role as Michael Pitt’s character in Bertolucci’s film). The key difference is how the films depict sexuality/nudity: Bertolucci is sexually frank enough to earn an NC-17 rating, whereas Melville and Cocteau’s rely more on suggestion and imagination. Still, both films create a claustrophobic feeling because brother and sister play psychological one-upmanship until there is no escape from the grotesque “game” that defines their relationship.
Bertolucci eased the incestuous tension through a broader milieu. He sets his film amidst May 1968, using the star-crossed siblings as a metaphor for sexual and cultural revolution. There is no such specific context for Paul and Élisabeth. Cocteau and Melville deny the audience any place to hide, so their only recourse is to bear witness to their unchecked emotional manipulation and abuse. In terms of pure expression, there are few films like Les Enfants Terribles, although the dueling specificity of visions – equally unique and exasperating – does not necessarily mean the film stands among Melville’s best.
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