Heimliche Freundschaften

Another Delannoy 's film which needs restoring to favor in its native France where the director's reputation,because of the stupidity of the fusty Cahiers du Cinema,has definitely sunk.Delannoy,almost a centenarian,worked till 1995 ,but "Les Amitiés Particulières" is his last good movie.I'm happy to notice that there's not one single negative comment on it.Proof positive that non-French are better at judging French Films.Maybe the rating is currently a bit too high (8,9),but if it can help Delannoy get out of oblivion where he has fallen,so much the better.

Delannoy ,transferring a novel which was very popular in the sixties,depicts a world which no longer exists.Lines warn us before the cast and credits:times have changed,iron discipline is now a thing of the past,but there are things which never change: the first emotions of the adolescence.

Some people wrote there was a "gay interest" in the movie.I do not think it is so.If Georges falls for Alexandre ,it is because he lives in a man's man's man's world.Except for the scene of the prize giving day,there are no women,a fortiori girls in the film.And this is a world where religion reigns everywhere,a world where young aristocrats or wealthy bourgeois study under the priests' extremely watchful eye.

Best performance comes from Didier Haudepin,a wunderkind (like Brigitte Fossey in "Jeux Interdits" ) who grew up to become a director ("Paco l'Infallible " starring the late Patrick Dewaere) and an actor ("Les Assassins de l'Ordre" one of Marcel Carné's last efforts) but without any real success.When he appears ,holding the lamb,it is a transparent metaphor of purity.Alexandre's and Georges's love will remain pure and platonic .Their relationship reminds me of that between Le Petit Prince and the aviator in Saint-Exupery's famous novel.Their meetings in the greenhouse are extremely well filmed .That was not such an easy subject for the sixties and the pejorative word "academic" with which the highbrows often label Delannoy does not make any sense here.