This Special Friendship (1964) on Netflix
Fourteen-year-old Georges de Sarre arrives at Saint-Claude, a strict Catholic boarding school. He is drawn to twelve-year-old Alexandre Motier, a friendship the priests discourage.
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- Netflix3.8/5
- IMDb7.6/103,418 votes
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Plot summary
Georges de Sarre, fourteen and the son of the Marquis de Sarre, is sent to Saint-Claude, a Catholic boarding school. Among the boys he is drawn to the friendly Lucien Rouvère, until Marc de Blajan warns him that some students only seem all right. Georges learns that Lucien already shares a close friendship with André Ferron, the two having exchanged blood. When his advances toward Lucien come to nothing, Georges turns to Alexandre Motier, a twelve-year-old, and the two begin a particular friendship of the kind the seminary term describes. The priests who run the school disapprove of such attachments between boys of different ages, holding that tenderness leads to sensuality, even as some of them keep their own interest in the pupils.
Cast
- Alain-Philippe Malagnacas Un élève
Show all 13 cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about This Special Friendship (1964)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Catholic authorities tried to block the film's release, and when novelist François Mauriac condemned it in Le Figaro, author Roger Peyrefitte retaliated with a scathing open letter in Arts magazine that outed Mauriac's repressed homosexuality.
- Author Roger Peyrefitte visited the set of the film and began a controversial relationship with a 12-year-old extra, which he later chronicled in his memoirs.
- Producer Christine Gouze-Rénal, sister-in-law of future French president François Mitterrand, secured the film's locations despite initial resistance from the Catholic Church.
- Manga artist Moto Hagio cited Jean Delannoy's film as a key inspiration for her groundbreaking 1974 work The Heart of Thomas.
- The film's October 1974 prime-time broadcast on Antenne 2, followed by a televised debate on forbidden loves, marked a cultural milestone in French LGBTQ+ representation.
