Screen Picks

by Sam Adams

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Les Cousins (Sat., July 12, 7 p.m., $5-$7, International House, 3701 Chestnut St., 866-468-7619, ihousephilly.org) It's no reflection on International House's programming to say that their movies are tough to sit through. For as long as anyone cares to remember, the unforgiving seats in Hopkinson Hall have served to separate the diehard cinephile from the merely curious. You could experience great art, but your tailbone would pay the price.

On July 18, I-House will celebrate the dawn of a more comfortable era with The Wrecking Ball party, the last public event before the theater's long-anticipated renovation. But there's still time for one more screening, bruised coccyges be damned.

Simultaneously celebrating Bastille Day and closing out (for now) the 30 Years of Film discussion series, Claude Chabrol's Les Cousins is a wicked anti-morality play from a director who would make burnished cynicism his stock-in-trade. Although he came from the same Cahiers du Cinéma background as Truffaut and Godard, Chabrol rapidly diverged from the path of the New Wave, but in 1959, Les Cousins stood alongside Truffaut's The 400 Blows as the beachhead of a bold new tradition.

Like Truffaut, Chabrol explicitly tipped his hat to Balzac in his first feature, which in Chabrol's case was a harbinger of the creeping classicism that would distance him from his peers. The basic plot of Les Cousins is so archetypical it verges on mythology: Bright, virtuous Charles (Gérard Blain) comes to the big city, takes up with his dissolute cousin Paul (Jean-Claude Brialy) and eventually faces ruin. Even at this early stage, the icy remove characteristic of Chabrol's glossy thrillers is evident. The story's tragic tone demands that we identify with Charles, but Chabrol seems to dislike the provincial prig as much as his debauched city counterpart. There's no real tragedy here, just the blind workings of fate, or of nothingness having its way with the world.

I-House may be taking the rest of the season off, but Francophiles may take solace in French Summer Nights at the Ambler, County and Bryn Mawr theaters. Co-existing with their invaluable Hollywood summer program, the French series brings Amélie (July 10), Jules and Jim (July 15-17) and Breathless (July 22-24). Reason enough to get off your feet for a spell.

(s_adams@citypaper.net)