Professor's pet André Morney (Thibault Vinçon), an apparent apostle of Bohemian satirist Karl Kraus, kicks off this film by professing his contempt for writers and writing. This idea may hold interest for students and for adults who never left academia, but for many of us who left such questioning behind after graduation, in favor of more practical and relational pursuits, it merely bores. But hold on, it gets more interesting as the relationships between Morney and his disciples emerge.Morney continues his pose throughout the film. Yet, as we learn later, when it comes to his own thesis, he can manage barely more than a first draft. Indeed, when his faculty adviser (Jacques Bonnaffé) threatens to drop him as an advisee, Morney resorts to mild violence to secure his diploma.Meanwhile, Morney's diatribes against writing are so convincing that they prompt his friends and fellow students, Eloi (Malik Zidi) to toss away his manuscript for a novel, and Alexandre (Alexandre Steiger) to abandon writing altogether in favor of acting.This all comes to a head after Eloi's mother, Florence Duhaut (Dominique Blanc), a successful writer herself, rescues Eloi's novel from the trash and submits it for publication without his knowledge. Upon discovering this, Eloi is ready to sue his mother, but eventually all is forgiven, and upon publication, Alexandre is the reader at Eloi's book signing.But where is Morney? Off for a year at U. C. Berkeley, as supposed? Or not? And will he show up for the reading? As in a good college text book, one leaves the answers to these and other questions to the viewer.All actors are good looking and perform well, but Natacha Régnier, in particular, spikes male interest as the beautiful librarian, Marguerite.

Imagine that the next episode of THE MOLE plopped a gaggle of cerebral contestants not in the confines of American suburbia, but smack dab in the middle of a Parisian university community. The mole's objective, of course, would be to sabotage any progress toward authentic art or human communication on the part of his\her student peers. This episode comes with a unique twist: none of the other contestants realize the possibility of the mole's existence.Seeing a verbose Iago trying to snuff out any sniff at success on the part of classmates while expecting to receive laureate status via acclamation in LES AMITIES MALEFIQUES is one of the better film portrayals of self-delusion since NOTES ON A SCANDAL.If this sounds interesting, don't bother waiting for an American remake. There is no cute kid part like MOSTLY MARTHA, no explosions as in LA FEMME NIKITA, and not as much creepiness as THE VANISHING. This one's likely to remain a Gallic exclusive.

Delicate film about illusions and truth. About trust and self-introspection, about fiction, desires and social masks. About literature as spider web and structure of an age.Nostalgic pledge for discover of reality's nuances, search of intellectual traps, definition of master and errors, appearances and compassion. The other like perfect prey of our mediocrity. Questions without answers and forms of refuge.It is not a spectacular movie and the ethic circle is one of signs for French vision about social realities but the message, the acting, the lights and the shadows, atmosphere and the subtle end, ambiguous beginning and images of idol-victim, measure of gestures and skin of dialogs, tension and waiting, the carpet of lies and the fight between ambition and its instruments, obsessions and some words of books, self-legitimation and split dreams, taste of Dostoevsky's "The Possessed" makes a special occasion to look an ordinary world in a new light:small sins and vanities ashes.

If I'm right that Alain-Fournier's Le Grand Meaulnes (The Wanderer) is still pivotal in French culture, the slightly disreputable bad-boy mentor remains an essential part of the myth of youth over there. And you'll enjoy Emmanuel Bourdieu's fast-paced, light, but biting study of a role model who crashed, so long as you accept the film's very French, Parisian, focus on getting ahead early in a small, competitive, celebrity-conscious, idea-smitten intellectual world. That's the world the good-looking Alexandre Pariente (Alexandre Steiger) enters when he walks into the Sorbonne literature class of famous writer-scholar Professor Mortier (Jacques Bonnaffé), straight off the train and carrying his suitcase. Alexandre and new arrivals Eloi Duhaut (Malik Zidi) and Edouard Franchon (Thomas Blanchard) are instantly impressed by André Mourney (Thibault Vinçon), who has the audacity to address this first class, speaking with enormous confidence (and some elegance) about the subject of writing.Alexandre, Eloi, and Edouard become André Mourney's disciples. His theme is always that people only write because they are too weak to resist, and that they must have a good excuse for giving way to that weakness. André is really a terrible boor and ultimately disreputable: but he has more panache than the others, as that opening class showed. He turns out to be destructive, and a liar. A terrible liar. He steals the girl they all want, the librarian Marguerite (Natacha Régnier of Ozon's Criminel Lovers/Les amants criminels and Fontaine's How I Killed My Father/Comment j'ai tué mon père), telling Eloi to burn his love-note to her (because, of course, one should never write love-notes) and then moving in on her himself. He has a good effect on Alexandre, telling him he should really be an actor. That turns out to be true, and Alexandre has immediate success in the French classics. But André's pompous negativism leads Eloi to go out in the middle of the night and dump a novel he's written in the trash. Eloi's mother is a well-known, slightly crazy writer, Florence Duhaut (Dominique Blanc), so Eloi's understandably diffident. But André's influence on him is destructive.It turns out that André is a protégé of Professor Mortier. But André's so busy pontificating among his peers, he neglects to work on his thesis. He tells Eloi to work on James Ellroy, and suggests there's a scholarship at Berkeley waiting for them both. When things go bad between Mortier and André, the latter leaves, pretending that he is going to an American university. This is the crucial moment when the others, who've been held together one way or another by André (even those among them André has been most abusive to), finally have to grow up and become independent. We already know by now what a rotter André has been. We've seen him open the beautiful Marguerite's laptop and delete a short story she has written. (Eloi finally replaces André in Marguerite's good graces by retrieving it).Eloi is faced with a problem when he learns his mother has also retrieved his discarded novel, submitted it to her publisher faking his signature, and had it accepted. Eventually he allows it to be published, and it's a great success. He doesn't like his original title though. The new one is: Les Amitiés maléfiques (Poison Friends).The young actors are all appealing. Malik Zidi will be remembered from Les Temps qui changent, Water Drops on Burning Rocks, and Place Vendome-- and will soon be seen in none other than Le Grand Meaulnes (a new version). The least known till now is Thibault Vinçon (André), whom the director spotted and admired for his "technical brilliance and sensitivity" at an acting workshop. Vinçon reappears at the end, and the way he conveys André's rapid transformation from rising star to instantly old raté (failure) is brilliant.Bourdieu knows whereof he speaks: he is himself the son of a well known French intellectual and film figure. This is a smart and thought-provoking film whose classic theme doesn't prevent if from being fresh. A sterling choice by the festival jury of the Film Society of Lincoln Center for the 2006 New York Film Festival.