Murmur of the Heart (1972)

This is less a story than a series of vignettes with a throughline.

Laurent's the youngest (14) of three boys in a well-to-do family. His brothers are a bit wild and eager to usher their sibling into manhood, mocking and torturing him along the way, as brothers do. The mother dotes on all three, but especially her little sickly Laurent.

Mom and son wind up spending several weeks at a sanitorium to treat his heart murmur. While there, he begins to see his mother in a new light.

Probably the most disturbing thing about this film is that things which should horrify me seemed rather natural. Most of the time I was watching with my nose wrinkled. I hate that I came away from this feeling like a prude, even though I knew what I was seeing. It wasn't beautiful or inevitable, despite the attempt to make it seem so.

C