How sad is this?

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

After viewing this film, I found the script to be overly ambitious. Autism, failing child protection, child sexuality, incest, self-mutilation, child abandonment, suicide, child imprisonment, child gangs,... director Christophe Ruggia chose to stuff his script with a wide range of social issues. In my view too much for a film of 105 minutes, leaving me wondering occasionally which point the film was trying to make. I was left with the feeling that 'something' was missing. For instance: the transition of Chloé (Adele Haenel) from being aphephobic to the most huggable person in the world, happened so fast that it was almost incredible.The movie is highly advisable though. The cinematography of Eric Guichard is excellent, Vincent Rottiers makes an amazing debut and all in all the film will grab your attention from beginning to end. But above all, Christophe Ruggia dares to tackle very controversial subject, not by subtle suggestion, as is the norm nowadays, but by clearly showing what it's all about.

Les diables is a powerful, delightful, poignant and terribly sad film. Hard to endure in many of its crucial moments. Definitely not a popcorn movie. This is a film with a lot of work in the script and a lot of masterful work in many other aspects.The acting is not only superb... it's mesmerising. I think about myself directing these two young actors into such a complicated argument and it sort of makes me shiver.This film seems to explode in your mind. The story is so engaging and powerful, you'll have the same experience many of us already have: it's very difficult to put it away for a long time.Cinematography is on par and above of the best french contemporary cinematographers. Lighting, locations, wardrobe and the whole aesthetic experience is so subtle that it goes under the skin unnoticed, but with a clear and powerful purpose. The dynamics are all well thought and paced to fit the crudeness of the story.But, above all, the acting reflects the most difficult human experiences in a world where all the characters have is each other. It's a fearful drive in the territory of love: its beauty, its bitterness, its bright and dark sides. All in all, a film about love where the most unexpected things will happen.

Wow, where did these actors come from? Throughout the film, I was in turmoil who was the better actor, Adele Haenel or Vincent Rottiers. She did an outstanding job in an almost non-speaking role and he was very morose, gloomy and violent as well. I do believe that to get children (although they're almost teens) to act this way is very hard. And to accomplish it in two actors, is very admirable. Ruggia did an excellent job, maybe the casting alone was 90 percent of that.Without spoilering anything, I would like to comment that the let's say, 'least boring scenes' between Haenel and Rottiers, to use a heavy understatement, have not been shot in a mainstream film, since Maladolescenza (1977) ( http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0076749/ ). I suppose Ruggia didn't care about American distribution, and rightly so. Take into account that Maladolescenza was shot in a very different era, where a lot more was possible, a much more permissive epoque when not EVERY bit of skin was declared porn as it is now, we have to salute Ruggia even more, and Haenel and Rottiers as well. Although ... I don't know what the reason is that Haenel has not made a film since Les Diables, and Rottiers has. If it is because of those 'least boring scenes', then that surely would be a pity, because then we would have lost a potentially great actress.

I don't know if you have seen Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange", but maybe you are aware of the scene where the lead character is forced to watch gruesome film sequences under the influence of nausea-inducing medication, whilst being tied down and having his eyes forced open by a speculum-like contraption. I mention this because it somehow is a very apt description of what watching "Les diables" felt like to me. I actually saw it when it first came out, about two years ago, and although I have forgotten most of the plot that feeling is still with me.Without "giving away" (in the widest possible sense) too much, "Les diables" is a film about two feral, orphaned siblings (the girl is supposedly autistic, and feral, while the boy is just feral) who run away from their orphanage and essentially go on a rampage, committing every monstrosity in the book of cliché'd filmmaking, including murder, arson and incest. I can only speculate about what the director, Christophe Ruggia, was trying to achieve, but at some point he must have decided to patch over the undeniably weak script with scenes of crassness so that the film would be labeled "disturbing" -- and quite a number of viewers seem to have fallen for this gimmick. The only thing it did for me was to make an already mediocre movie memorably bad -- "disturbing", no doubt, but not in the way the director could have intended.To give credit where it's due, and without taking anything away from the film's god-awfulness, I thought that the acting of Vincent Rottiers, who plays the brother ("Joseph"), was quite remarkable. Overall, this could quite possibly be the worst film I have ever seen in my life. May god will that it remains thus.