I first saw this movie on the Independent Film Channel, and decided to watch it, not knowing what it was about. And I was very shocked but the end. It tells the story of a young teenage boy, Laurant, as he quickly grows up. He's somewhat forced to lose his virginity via prostitute by his two older brothers. Afterwards, he goes to a scout camp, and becomes ill with Scarlet Fever, and also has a heart murmur. His doctor suggests a sanitarium for him to visit, and he and his mother stay at a nearby hotel for some time. He meets a couple girls his age there, whom he likes. He and his mother has a very close relationship. They have to share a hotel room, and one morning his mother is bathing, and he watches her through the door until his mother sees him and slaps him across the face. Later on in the movie, it is obvious that his mother is having an affair, and when Laurant discovers this, he is somewhat upset. His mother decides to leave with her suitor for two days, and Laurant is left at the hotel, and acts very rude and raunchy to the people at the hotel and sanitarium. Laurant also dresses as his mother, and places her close on his bed, as an outline as her. When his mother returns, it is obvious that she is very upset, and Laurant tries to console her. They go to a Bastille Day celebration soon after, and when they arrive home, Laurant and his mother have sex. They vow never to speak of it again. Laurant scores the hotel, looking for a girl his age to have sex with, and he does. When he returns from the young girl's room, his father and brothers are there, and they tease him for being out all night. I have to admit, the scene where Laurant and his mother have sex was very shocking to me, but I'm not going to let that decide whether this was a good movie or not. I think this movie shows the raw truth about some boys experiences during their adolescent years. Also, it can show how unhealthy a relationship between mother and child can be sometimes. You have to love your child, but there are obvious limits. I really respect this movie for not being afraid to make a film with such subject matter in 1971.

Not the masterpiece that I expected from an Oscar nominated play, but it was an interesting film.Directed by Louis Malle (Au revoir, les enfants, Atlantic City) and starring Benoît Ferreux (Victory) in his first film as a 15-year-old discovering sex, it it a reflective look at youth in the upper classes of French society.Laurent (Ferreux) runs the table with masturbation, which result in counseling with an all-too-familiar Catholic priest; a rite of passage trip to the local bordello by his brothers, where he meets the typical caring prostitute (Gila von Weitershausen - Malle's companion at the time); attempts with girls at a spa; and, finally, a tryst with his step-mother (Lea Massari). Don't get too excited by the incest as there is nothing to see.It was cute and touching, but nothing spectacular.

It's high comedy. It's French bourgeois lifestyle. Louis Malle's delicate style of working with taboo subject matter reached a personal plateau with a dysfunctional household in "Murmur of the Heart", an early reach back into his own garden of memories and familial idiosyncrasies that he has stringently plucked from over the years. He approaches it with an innocent intent, cheeky, but still innocent nonetheless. Through the nostalgic and mean-spirited jibes at the domestic help, clergy and stiff-lipped crust of high society, it commences on a journey of an adolescent male, Laurent Chevalier (Benoit Ferreux) in Dijon, France circa 1954. He longs to break free to that stage of enlightened adulthood that seems just within reach but yet so very far. But within its pith, it's the very antithesis of melodrama. Taking on its inviolable subject matter's horns with both hands, it wrangles it to the ground while giving us something to think about. It's definitely not about exorcising ghosts of the past but to let them regale us with stories of unforgettable youth.After 35 years, "Murmur of the Heart" still rings truer and closer to home than most contemporary comedies (and even dramas) revolving around the "coming of age" and "sexual awakening" in a young teen. It's also more daring and liberal in its construction of key family members being part of that very natural formation of sexual DNA and identity. They discuss philosophy. They discuss suicide. They discuss "The Story of O". Laurent and his 2 older brothers consort in disrespectfully petty behaviour contrary to what their upbringing holds sacred. Laurent's a top student, an intellectual that sees the world around him as a playground. It's a smalltime superiority complex as he defines his sensitive sensibilities with discernment beyond his years and a haughty disregard for divergent thoughts with a self-important air.Revolving primarily about Laurent and his mother, Clara ("L' avventura's" Lea Massari), it's a refreshing look at a parental relationship based around adoration and fondness (coming under constant mocking by his brothers) than the contemporaneous and contemptuous notion of disdain and rebelliousness surrounding the authority figures and generational gaps. It underlines the idiom of a mother being her son's first love. In its essence, it encapsulates many complicated mother-child relationships including the emotional Oedipal issues that do crop up. And through that, a lovely parallelism is wrought with its interpretation of a woman who wants to be a girl and a boy who wants to be a man.Conforming to an almost sitcom style, its self-dependent, autonomous scenes and situations just about start to border on farcical proportions. Its characters place sex and carnality high up on a pedestal, while Malle condescendingly films it as something so pedestrian and run-of-the-mill, not worth the hype and excitement over it anyway. He makes the patient, inevitable buildup to a key sex scene that had caused controversy when it was first released, to seem more natural and accepting than he does the sexual encounters that actually do seem the norm in society.

I don't really think there's much to say about this film that this film doesn't clearly say itself. It's a coming-of-age story, more importantly a sexual one. A fifteen year old Parissien boy discovers girls of all ages and types, has to figure out what to do with them, and also has to figure out how to come to terms with his relationship with his mother and the fact that she's female too.It's one of those films that's very true-to-life but not something you can really show to someone of that age without confusing them more. It takes a lot of maturity and retrospective understanding to totally relate to the characters and what's going on, and in a few cases it's still likely to easily be misinterpreted. But overall it's a remarkable look at that age group and the things they have to go through to understand themselves and their bodies.I also personally relate to it because of how much the main character tries to be intellectual. That in itself carries its own connotations and sort of leads me to believe that anyone who at one point thought that intellectualism was key to personal transcendence may enjoy somewhat more this film's specific approach to something shown quite often in cinema history.Finally, I love how iconoclast this film is and the almost flippant approach it has to society's ideals of art, beauty, and spirituality. That said, how many films do we need with pedophile priests? --PolarisDiB