Word: mallee
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Incest is the issue in Louis Malle's new comedy, even though the film manages to reach an ending that has all the simple-minded cheeriness of an updated Gallic episode of Leave it to Beaver. Witness: 15-year-old Laurent Chevalier, shoes in hand, tiptoes into his room after...
Why is laughter so easy in such a difficult situation? It isn't that The Murmur of the Heart is the kind of comedy that permits easy nonsequiturs, and it isn't that the advent of Laurent's girl-friend is preferable for everyone concerned to Laurent's incestuous leanings...
At this point in the film, a middle-aged man across the aisle leaned in my direction and whispered authoritatively, "Excellent, excellent." He was pleased with Malle's treatment of incest, and with good reason. Murmur plays a traditionally tragic theme in a nostalgically comic key, and proves it can...
But writer-director Malle calls his shots a little unfairly at times. His script is contrived to labor an occasional unfunnny joke and, though Benoit Fereux's acting is mostly convincing, the role he has to fill is just a little bit larger than life.
Malle manages the technical side of his scenario with facility. There are funny moments in the classroom and at home when Laurent and his brothers torment the family maid. Malle, however, seeks to banish the Oedipal shadows that cloud his story by turning almost everything into comedy. Instead of forming...