Louis Malle’s compelling post-WWII drama ‘Murmur of the Heart’ is the first of two semi-autobiographical accounts of his youth.
Laurent Chevalier (Benoît Ferreux) is a 15-year-old who lives in Dijon with his family. Though his Italian mother dotes on him, his father is cold and distant. And his two older brothers always seem intent on dragging him into mischief. One night, their pranks involve a brothel and what happens there changes Laurent’s perspective on the world.
Malle perfectly captures the sense of a youthful innocence lost and the changing values of late 1940s France. As he later noted, ‘My passion for jazz, my curiosity about literature, the tyranny of my two elder brothers, how they introduced me to sex— this is pretty close to home’.
