Murmur Of The Heart (Criterion Collection) (1971) On DVD

Actor:           Lea Massari, Benoît Ferreux, Daniel Gélin, Michael Lonsdale, Ave Ninchi
Director:      Louis Malle
Genre:          Foreign Video - French
Year:            1971
Studio:         Criterion
Length:        118
Released:   March 28, 2006
Rating:         Restricted (MPAA Rating)
Format:         DVD
Misc:             Color
Language:    French
Subtitles  :    English

DESCRIPTION:

This is a jolly coming-of-age story about a 15-year-old boy named Laurent Chevalier who is growing up in bourgeois surroundings in Dijon, France. This is France in the mid-1950s rather than America in the 1990s. Thus, Laurent is unharmed by events which would irreparably shatter the self-esteem of a modern American adolescent: he gets drunk, he smokes, he has sex (including incestuous sex), he is smothered by his mother, he is ignored by his father, a priest makes a pass at him, he gets rheumatoid fever, etc. There's enough scandalous behavior in this film to make 100 made-for-TV movies, and yet this is a very happy and oddly innocent tale.