POISON FRIENDS
(Les amitiés maléfiques)
© 2006 by C. E. Murphy. All Rights Reserved.
Malik Zidi as Eloi Duhaut and
Thibault Vinçonn as André Morney
in Poison Friends
(Les amitiés maléfiques)
Directed by Emmanuel  Bourdieu,
France

Photo Credit: Strand Releasing

          Think back and recall if you
  might have had an acquaintance
  or pal who in retrospect turned out to be less of a friend than you thought. If not,
  you probably were quite lucky. If so, you can easily relate to the figures in
  Emmanuel Bourdieu's POISON FRIENDS (Les amitiés maléfiques).

          Bourdieu's film is set at a French university where André Morney (Thibault
  Vinçon) is a sort of Big Man on Campus. He is the favorite of Professor Mortier
  (Jacques Bonnaffé) and exerts his influence over a trio of younger students,
  Eloi Duhaut (Malik Zidi), whose mother (Dominique Blanc) is a famous novelist,
  Alexandre Pariente (Alexandre Steiger), an aspiring playwright and actor, and
  Franchon (Thomas Blanchard), who hopes for a literary career. To Morney,
  literary pursuits are an anathema. He is always invoking a quote attributed to
  Karl Kraus: "Why do some write? Because they are too weak not to." For
  Morney, that is a life lesson.

          His influence gradually infects the trio of pals. Franchon is dismissed early
  over the publication of a story in a literary magazine, partly because he wanted
  to impress an attractive librarian named Marguerite (Natacha Regnier). Instead,
  Morney moves in and begins a relationship with Marguerite, although it is not
  beneath him to sabotage her writing efforts. Eventually, Morney begins to
  unravel. After a bad confrontation with Professor Mortier, he tells his buddies
  that he is off to America to study James Ellroy. Instead, he ends up in the
  French countryside teaching literature at an army base.

          Morney is the kind of person who sucks up all the life and energy in
  a room and makes everything about him. Once he leaves their lives, Eloi
  begins to realize the detrimental effect he has had.

          There's some schematics at work in the screenplay, but the film proves to
  be an entertaining, if frustrating, experience. There are no easy answers provided
  by Bourdieu and some audience members will be disappointed by that.


                                  Rating:                B