Little Lips (1978)

Little Lips is a moody, old-world drama that tries to translate post–World War I trauma into something intimate and literary, with Pierre Clémenti giving the kind of haunted, inward performance that can hold a scene even when nothing is being said. The film’s atmosphere is its real hook: a quiet manor, a wounded man writing his way through despair, and a slow, melancholy drift that feels more like a feverish confession than a conventional period piece. It’s also candid about sex and nudity and leans into a provocative, uncomfortable dynamic involving a young girl—handled in a way that’s meant to be tragic and unsettling rather than titillating, but it will be a dealbreaker for many viewers. If you can meet it on those terms, it’s a strange, somber curiosity: a bleak portrait of broken desire and the dangerous stories people tell themselves to keep living.

Little Lips is aiming for a bleak, artsy post–World War I character study about trauma, impotence, and a man trying to claw his way back to feeling alive through writing and obsession. The problem is that its central “relationship” involves a 12-year-old girl, and the film lingers on her nudity enough that many viewers will find it exploitative rather than illuminating, no matter how it’s framed as chaste or tragic. Expect a slow, moody Euro-drama with explicit adult nudity, a heavy depressive tone, and suicide themes, not a tasteful romance or a purely psychological portrait. If you can’t tolerate taboo subject matter involving a minor, or you don’t want your art-house viewing to come with a strong ethical queasiness, this is an easy skip—even if Pierre Clémenti’s haunted performance and the period atmosphere occasionally hint at a better film trapped inside it.