Les Enfants terribles

Dir. Jean-Pierre Melville

France 1949 | Black & white | 117 mins | Cert 12 | Drama

Cast: Nicole Stéphane, Edouard Dermithe

Melville’s adaptation of Cocteau’s novel is a daring and emotionally engaging film about a brother and sister whose sibling love slips uncomfortably into the realm of arrested development. Melville’s meticulous attention to detail and painstakingly precise control form a counterpoint to Cocteau’s more anarchic tendencies, perfectly reflecting the dialectic between order and disorder, dreams and reality, that is so central to the film.

Available on: DVD