The Cement Garden (1993)

Director:

Andrew Birkin

Writers:

Andrew Birkin (writer)
Ian McEwan (novel)

Release Date:

11 February 1994 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Tagline:

Love knows no limits.

Plot:

After the death of her husband, the mother of Julie, Jack, Sue and Tom begins to suffer from a mysterious illness...

Plot Keywords:

Illness | Secret | Basement | Diary | Falling In Love

Awards:

2 wins & 3 nominations

Cast

Andrew Robertson	...	Jack
Charlotte Gainsbourg	...	Julie
Alice Coulthard	...	Sue
Ned Birkin	...	Tom
Sinéad Cusack	...	Mother
Hanns Zischler	...	Father
Jochen Horst	...	Derek, Julie's Friend
Gareth Brown	...	William
William Hootkins	...	Commander Hunt (voice)
Dick Flockhart	...	Truck Driver
Mike Clark	...	Driver's Mate

Also Known As:

Der Zementgarten (Germany)

Runtime:

105 min | USA:101 min

Country:

France | Germany | UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

USA:Not Rated | France:-12 | Germany:16 | UK:18

Company:

Laurentic Film Productions

Trivia:

A quote from the film (as spoken by Gainsbourg) is featured in the introduction to the 2001 Madonna song "What It Feels Like for a Girl".

Goofs:

Continuity: After Jack stops tickling Julie, she is sitting up, then sits up again.

Quotes:

Julie: Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short, wear shirts and boots, because it's OK to be a boy, but for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, because you think that being a girl is degrading. But secretly you'd love to know what it's like, wouldn't you? What it feels like for a girl?

Movie Connections:

References Our Mother's House (1967)

Soundtrack:

Come To Me

It's a family affair

There's an almost heroic honesty to this urbanized, co-ed "Lord of the Flies"-ish love story. A square stone house serves as the isolated island while the jungle is the familiar setting of urban sprawl and other people. Director Andrew Birkin, in adapting Ian McEwan's novel (The Comfort of Strangers) to the screen, doesn't try to shock us. He just ignores our prejudices and lets fall away our preconceptions. What emerges is a sense of liberation from the usual hypocrisy.

The love story is an acting out of sister-brother incest, almost a celebration of it. "Seems natural to me" is what fifteen-year-old Jack (Andrew Robertson) says while in the naked embrace of his older sister Julie (Charlotte Gainsbourg). I could almost buy it, but I know of the "kibbutz effect" in which it was found that unrelated children growing up together virtually never married one another. If sister and brother grow up separately there can be sexual excitement between them, but if they grow up in the same household they tend to find each other sexually boring. Family members usually work out the sexual tension through play at an early age so that by the time they are sexually mature, they are looking elsewhere. That's how the incest taboo works. Its purpose is to channel the sexual drive outward, the better to mix the gene pool. For the individual, incest is not an attractive option socially or economically because it is so much better to increase one's family and influence by joining with someone from another tribe or band. If you marry your sister, you don't gain any brothers. Consequently the average person recoils at the mere suggestion of incest, and it is this mindless, knee jerk reaction that this film attacks.

Consider isolated families in the pre-history. What other reproductive choice would they have? Certainly it is better to reproduce in the hope that the next generation might find partners. This evolutionary wisdom is what is captured here. The sexual drive is seen as stronger than society's ephemeral prejudices, and rightly so since our genes must survive even when the society is stupid and self-destructive in its mores.

Birkin's direction lacks focus in the beginning and the editing seems brilliant and disjointed by turns, but Birkin eschews even the hint of a cliché and ends up with a slightly flawed, but engrossing, strikingly original work of cinematic art.

I'm disappointed that the sound track did not include the seventies Motown tune, "It's a Family Affair."