Les amitiés particulières (film)
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Les amitiés particulières | |
---|---|
Directed by | Jean Delannoy |
Written by | Jean Aurenche Pierre Bost Roger Peyrefitte (novel) |
Produced by | Christine Gouze-Rénal |
Starring | Didier Haudepin |
Cinematography | Christian Matras |
Edited by | Louisette Hautecoeur |
Music by | Jean Prodromidès |
Distributed by | Pathé Contemporary Films (USA) |
Release date |
|
Running time | 100 minutes |
Country | France |
Language | French |
Les amitiés particulières (This Special Friendship) is a 1964 film adaptation of the Roger Peyrefitte novel Les amitiés particulières directed by Jean Delannoy. It stars Francis Lacombrade as Georges, Didier Haudepin as Alexandre and Michel Bouquet as Père de Trennes. It was released in English as This Special Friendship. The film was produced by Christine Gouze-Rénal, whose sister Danielle was the wife of future French president François Mitterrand. The filming location for the movie was the 13th-century Royaumont Abbey, some 50 km north of Paris.
The movie is mostly true to the novel, changing only relatively minor plot points such as Alexandre's suicide from poisoning to death by throwing himself from a train. Also, Alexandre in the movie is brown-haired, not blond, which also removes some of the inside jokes between Alexandre and Georges present in the book.
On the set of the film, Peyrefitte, who was 57-years-old at the time, met the 12-year-old aristocrat Alain-Philippe Malagnac d'Argens de Villèle who had been cast as a choir boy and was a big fan of the book. Not only did Peyrefitte sign Alain-Philippe's copy of the book but the two fell in love, pursuing a stormy relationship that Peyrefitte chronicled in some of his later novels such as Notre amour (1967) and L'enfant de cœur (1978).
Alain-Philippe Malagnac later was married to the French entertainer Amanda Lear and died in a house fire in 2000 at the age of 49, shortly after Peyrefitte's death.
Cast[]
- fr:Francis Lacombrade as Georges de Sarre
- Didier Haudepin as Alexandre Motier
- as Lucien Rouvère
- as Marc de Blajan
- Louis Seigner as Le père Lauzon/Father Lauzon
- Michel Bouquet as Le père de Trennes/Father Trennes
- Lucien Nat as Le père supérieur/Father Superior
Reception[]
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James Travers of Filmsdefrance.com gave the film four out of five stars, writing: "The arresting performances from Francis Lacombrade (remarkably his one and only film credit) and child actor Didier Haudepin bring to the film a kind of raw edge, poetry and spiritual intensity that is rare, even in French love films...Whilst Les Amitiés particulières stands as a powerful, deeply moving love story, it is actually far more than that. It is a pretty direct assault on the double standards and hypocrisies of contemporary society, which is forever governed by prejudice, petty rules and double standards."[1]
Soundtrack[]
- Pange lingua (choir)
- J.S. Bach: Invention No.13 in A minor, BWV 784 (piano)
- Alouette, gentille Alouette (train scene)
In Other Media[]
- The film was an inspiration for the manga The Heart of Thomas by Moto Hagio. Hagio was persuaded to see the film in the summer of 1970, and in November 1971, published the first 40 pages of the manga in Shojo Comic.
References[]
- ^ Travers, James (2007). "Les Amities particulieres (1964), a film by Jean Delannoy - review". Filmsdefrance.com. Retrieved 21 June 2019.
External links[]
- Les amitiés particulières at IMDb
- Stills from the movie
- (in French) Four-minute making-of at INA
- Les amitiés particulières at AllMovie
- Schoolboy Sins—1967 Time magazine review of the movie (subscription required)
- 1964 films
- French-language films
- French films
- French LGBT-related films
- Teen LGBT-related films
- Films directed by Jean Delannoy
- Films based on French novels
- Rail transport films
- Films about suicide
- 1964 LGBT-related films
- Films with screenplays by Jean Aurenche
- Films with screenplays by Pierre Bost
- Boarding school films