Nostalgia Kinky

An elusive French thriller from director Louis Soulanes, Les cousines (1970) has all but slipped into obscurity despite the fact that it played throughout various parts of the world throughout the early seventies, including a run in The United States under the titles From Ear to Ear and The French Cousins. A twisted tale of manipulation and sadism concerning two deranged cousins who torment a young invalid woman they care for, Les cousines is a fairly standard outing despite some stand-out scenes and a terrific performance by Solange Pradel.

Les cousines is one of just a handful of titles directed by Soulanes, who remains best known for his work as a cinematographer. Born in the mid-summer of 1924 in France, Soulanes operated in a variety of behind-the-scenes capacities through a career that stretched over five decades, including as an editor, writer, cinematographer, and finally director. The beginning of his career coincided with the early days of The French New Wave and indeed his very first credit was an auspicious one as he was cinematographer on Agnes Varda’s 1955 feature La Pointe Courte.

Soulanes time with The French New Wave was brief though as he spent the rest of his career working more in French productions like Jean-François Davy’s Le seuil du vide (1972) and more adult-themed pictures like Zygmunt Sulistrowski’s The Awakening of Annie (1975). A competent technician, Soulanes was a workmanlike filmmaker who never completely broke through career-wise in French cinema outside of just consistently working.

His first feature as both a writer and director remains one of his best known, 1961’s Les filles sèment le vent, which played in a variety of English language markets as The Fruit is Ripe. Les cousines arrived just about a decade after that promising first feature. Working with cinematographer Albert Susterre, who provides the film with some nice color images despite its obvious low budget, Soulanes adapted the script for Les cousines from an original novel The Perverse Woman’s Night credited to Fletcher D. Benson.

Owing a bit to the Italian Giallo, American melodramas, and The French Fantastique, Les cousines contains a few horrific elements, but it mostly falls squarely in the thriller genre with a few erotic twists mixed in for good measure. Running just around 80 minutes, Les cousines doesn’t outstay its welcome, and it is a watchable enough diversion although it doesn’t stand as a great lost film by any stretch of the imagination.

Shot mostly inside a French country house, Les cousines stars a trio of interesting actresses, the aforementioned Pradel, as well as Nicole Debonne and Danièle Argence. The performances are the best thing the film offers as Soulanes’ direction is never more than competent. Debonne and Argence both only worked a relatively short time in the French Film Industry and only have a dozen or so credits to each of their names. Scene-stealing Pradel who elevates the film at every turn had a much more memorable if still brief career and will be instantly recognizable to fans of Jean Rollin.

Solange Pradel had indeed made her big screen debut just over a year before Les cousines via her large and very memorable role in Jean Rollin’s 1968 opus Le viol du vampire (The Rape of the Vampire). While it was the only time Pradel worked with Rollin she she also appeared in the exceptional Rollinesque 1971 feature Morgane et ses nymphes (The Girl Slaves of Morgana Le Fay) for director Bruno Gantillon. She only appeared in a handful of other titles before all but retiring from the screen in the mid-seventies. Despite the brevity of her career, Pradel carved a real mark in her work with Rollin, Gantillon, and to a lesser degree, Soulanes.

Pradel’s intense near-silent performance in Les cousines and a solid final act save the film from being mostly forgettable. Soulanes packs the film with some boring love scenes and expected nudity but it never really gets off the ground and feels more like a low-rent Joe Sarno production more than anything else. Not helping matters is an obnoxious soundtrack credited to Claude Capra, although much of it sounds like an overly brassy library score just played under nearly every moment of the film.

Initially released in the fall of 1970 and all but ignored by the critics and public, Les cousines creeped its way around several international markets with a variety of titles including From Ear to Ear and Love Demons. Strangely slapped with an X rating it didn’t deserve, Les cousines all but slipped into obscurity by the home video era. An entertaining enough watch, Les cousines is nothing special but fans of Rollin and this era of French cinema could do worse than seeking it out. Soulanes threw in the towel as far as his directorial career went after the release of Les cousines, returning to work nearly exclusively as a cinematographer for the rest of his career. He passed away at the age of 89 just before Christmas in 2013.

-Jeremy Richey, January, 2024-