This is another French movie that I enjoyed. If you are homophobic, this may not the right movie for you. This is a very poetic movie both visually and linguistically on a controversial TOPIC of boy to boy to man-(priestly) love. I bet this is in the list of movies banned by the Catholic Church. It has an English subtitle. Click the CC button. If it turns read, the subtitle is on. Enjoy!
A study of possessive love, obsession and jealousy which transcends the gay characters and disturbing priestly abuse aspect. The actors are wonderfully committed to their characters, who were believable and complex human beings. Beautifully realized, poetic both visually and linguistically, if a bit stark. Life can be stark. At the end, I came to love the old and wise Abbot, who knows precisely the parameters of Christian love. The Church needed more like him, as we have seen in the present.
The screenplay is based on a semi-autobiographical play by Henry de Montherlant (1895-1972), which he began drafting at the age of 17, a year after he was expelled from an academy because of his friendship with another student; it was not published until 1951 because of its difficult subject: romantic friendships between schoolboys. The French title La Ville dont le Prince est un Enfant is taken from the Biblical text of Ecclesiastes 10:16 "Woe to the land whose king is a child." The limited action and long speeches in the film betray its origins in a play, but the director has managed to provide some variation in the locations of various scenes.
Did you enjoy this movie? Comments?
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