Cours privé (1986)

Cours privé is a French film first released in 1986, directed by Pierre Granier-Deferre.  The film stars Élisabeth Bourgine, Michel Aumont, Xavier Deluc, Sylvia Zerbib and Emmanuelle Seigner.  Our overall rating for this film is: good.


Shortly after she takes up a teaching post in a reputable private school, Jeanne Kern begins to receive offensive letters from an unknown admirer.  The school’s principal, Monsieur Ketti, becomes concerned when he is given a photograph depicting a female orgy, with the face of one woman cut out.  Jeanne is determined not to be intimidated, but things come to a head when her colleagues, family and parents of pupils at the school begin to receive copies of the compromising photograph.  Someone appears to be determined to drive her away – but why?

If there is a theme running through Pierre Granier-Deferre’s filmography as a director it is an affinity, if not relish, for the darker side of human psychology.  His characters – male and female equally – are rarely predictable, and often unfathomable in the way they treat themselves and other people.  Cours privé is one of his darker studies in this shadow world of the human psyche, revolving around the theme of forbidden love between a young woman and a much older man and the same young woman with the teenage girls in her charge.  It’s an unsettling, baffling exploration of the deadly sin of lust which – disappointingly – doesn’t go as far as perhaps it might in revealing the full extent of the sexual perversions which are hinted at (extreme narcissism, lesbianism, paedophilia and perhaps worse).   Pierre Granier-Deferre’s approach may be too cautious, a tad too conservative, but the lead performances – from Michel Aumont and Elizabeth Bourgine – are mesmerising, making this an uncomfortable but seductive voyage into uncharted territory.

© James Travers 2007

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