If you like you incest with a dose of pretentiousness, then Marguerite & Julien is for you. Based on a script that François Truffaut apparently once considered directing (although the legend is so vague he could have just politely said he skim-read it to stop the screenwriter pestering him), the film charts the lives of siblings-cum-lovers Marguerite & Julien, who, like Romeo & Juliet fight against society's unfair restrictions of their forbidden love, without ever really addressing that it may be forbidden for a reason. But, like with Anna Fritz, the problems come from terrible plotting, not mere squeamishness. It's framed as a story told by a teacher to a bunch of children (great way to get kids to sleep, incest), a device that is lazily dropped halfway through, and the whole thing feels like it was edited by a southpaw using right-handed scissors. The ending is where things go from gruelling to grotesque. The pair are executed (late spoiler, although it's a true story and the movie's so sh*t you shouldn't care) and we're treated to a Tree Of Life-inspired sequence where they talk about being at one with nature and their part in the bigger picture and more gumbo that seems to be trying to make you believe in the true love behind their interest. This was a film so bad that as the Cannes press screening it was met with complete silence. Not the conventional polite applause or the rare-but-insensuous boos, but complete and utter staggered silence.
