Claude Chabrol’s second film is almost a reverse image of his first. So where LE BEAU SERGE/’58 had a worldly soldier’s uncomfortable return to his old town, COUSINS follows a country lad in Paris. It’s all City Mouse/Country Mouse tropes as a couple of law students share a flat while prepping for final exams. Or rather, one preps. City mouse doesn’t see the point, this party boy will glide thru on instinct & natural charm, just as he does in life. (Is he meant to be quite the shit he seems in the film?) Their dicey relationship even more upset when a pretty girl enters. (Reflecting the male gaze of 1959 Paris, Juliette Mayniel displays little personality of her own. She’s there to reflect the men’s issues.) Gérard Blain’s country mouse may not have much confidence, but does have a secret weapon: Sincerity. Too bad Jean-Claude Brialy’s city mouse trumps with an even greater power: Insincerity! Chabrol stages in depth, wonderfully abetted by Henri Decaë’s glossy monochrome. But the story feels like a sketch stretched too thin. Largely inferior to Chabrol’s first, if no sophomore slump, he perversely rewards the unworthy before forcing an abrupt shift to tragedy the material can’t support. Instead, he pours on the ‘Liebestod’ from Wagner’s Tristan & Isolde to set the mood. Shooting for gay bromantic sub-text or trying for a cheap Brechtian distancing effect?
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned, LE BEAU SERGE/’58. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2012/05/le-beau-serge-1958.html
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