A REVIEW OF THE FILM LES AMITIÉS PARTICULIÈRES (1964)
Not at all well-acted. Clearly a rich story background, from the novel it was drawn from. The sort of subtle intensity you would need to capture a story like this is a high standard for any actor, and failed in this case by the younger, who in some key scenes did a lot of forced smiling for the camera but was not exactly into it.
The older boy was, in a way that is pitiful for the genre, emasculated in the development of the story. His manners and reserve cannot be faulted in their time and place, but the lack of a silently smoldering anger at the final circumstance of the world's betrayal was an affront to the dignity of his sex, in a film which supposedly meant to defend it.
The older boy was, in a way that is pitiful for the genre, emasculated in the development of the story. His manners and reserve cannot be faulted in their time and place, but the lack of a silently smoldering anger at the final circumstance of the world's betrayal was an affront to the dignity of his sex, in a film which supposedly meant to defend it.