Le pélican

Gérard Blain's film rests on an extraordinary paradox that, I believe, has never before been represented. What we call the Oedipus complex, a common device in storytelling, is indeed present here but daringly reversed: it is not the feelings of a son's rebellion against his father that we witness, but on the contrary (and what a contrary!) the father's amorous passion-one might even say Racine-like-for his young son. Throughout the film we inhabit the tension of a multiple transgression (from incest to voyeurism), presented as something to be reflected on, not merely observed. And this entire fringe of perversion, complete with its social backdrop (disgust for money and its vulgarity), is written in a rigorously indirect manner, through an art that is both forthright and elliptical, devious (in that it says nothing) yet sensitive, since it stages a desire: ultimately an enigmatic work, outside all avant-gardes and yet quietly gathering-without ever proclaiming it-all their virtuosity." "A Father in Love," Article by Roland Barthes - Le Nouvel Observateur