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Anne (Jeanne Goupil) and Lore (Catherine Wagener), 14 year old girls,
go to convent school - but they show remarkably little interest into what
the nuns teach them and are more interested in forbidden books, erotica,
and satanism. So in the summer holidays, when Anne's parents (Véronique
Silver, Jean-Pierre Helbert) leave her alone for 2 months on their vast
estate, Anne entices Lore to stay with her and play mischieveous pranks on
everybody around, pranks that sometimes border the criminal, like driving
away a farmer's (Gérard Darrieu) cows and burning his haystacks, or
poisoning Anne's estate's gardener's (Michel Robin) beloved birds and
using him as black priest in a (pseudo) satanist mass, then pushing him
into a lake.
It only gets really heavy when they pick up a man (Bernard Dhéran)
whose car has broken down, parade around in front of him in their
underwear and play a little game of seduction. Eventually the man gets so
turned on that he tries to rape Lore, and Anne sees herself forced to hit
him over the head with a log of wood - effectively killing him. Being
confronted with a dead body, the two girls get back to reality. They throw
the body into a nearby lake and decide to not see each other anymore until
school starts to not arouse suspicion. But the law has found them even in
their convent school, and soon enough, the two girls are questioned and
realize there is no way out, except ...
It's showcase night at school, and all the parents have come. Anne and
Lore do a double act, reciting poetry, but instead of some proper,
religious texts they have chosen a couple of morbid poems by Beaudelaire,
much to the amazement of all the parents present, who give them round
after round of applause, but much to the shock of the nuns. After the
second poem, the girls pour gasoline over themselves and ignite
themselves. The parents are still applauding, believing it is part of the
show ... until they realize the girls are burning for real - but by now
it's too late, the girls have already killed themselves ...
Shocking for its time, as the film shows both the sexual blossoming of
two 14-year-olds (though the actresses were in fact 19 and 20 when the
film was shot, but they look the part) in a bit of detail (but not too
much) and quite openly mocks church rituals, Don't Deliver Us from Evil
looks remarkably fresh even today, a macabre and erotic black comedy
telling the old story of 2 cute girls gone bad but pushing the envelope -
and its quite entertaining at that and enjoyably unpretentious.
Recommendation.
By the way, this film was loosely based on the case of Pauline Parker
& Juliet Hulme, two New Zealand killergirls whose case made the
headlines in the 1950's. In 1994, their case was also the basis for Peter
Jackson's Heavenly Creatures, a film that shows remarkable
parallels to Don't Deliver Us from Evil.
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