Format: DVD from NetFlix on kick-ass portable DVD player (Le Souffle au Coeur) and internet video (Mat i Syn) on laptop.
I’ve railed before that the typical coming-of-age story comes in two varieties. For boys, coming of age is all about coming to grips with mortality; you’re not a man until you realize that you will be dead someday. For girls, coming of age is all about coming to grips with sex and the possibility of motherhood; you’re not a woman until you realize that you have the power to bring new life into the world. At least, those are the twin realities of this basic story when it comes to film. So, when we’re presented with a story that looks and talks like this but is actually about a young adult male dealing with sex, well, it’s a bit of a surprise.
That, honestly, is about the only thing I really liked about Le Souffle au Coeur (Murmur of the Heart), which otherwise plays like “Adventures in Assholery” set to a jazz soundtrack. The people in this film are precisely the sort of people that I don’t like spending film time around. They are rude, arrogant, too rich for their own good, spoiled, entitled, and arrogant (yes, I said "arrogant" twice. They're really arrogant). And it gets worse. My impression is that in many ways, our title character is supposed to be something like a wealthy French version of Holden Caulfield. That might well be the case, because I hate A Catcher in the Rye and I hate that whiny little prick, too.
