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bill—maplewood:

This Special Friendship

This film was really sweet, as well as very sad. Some scenes were painfully cute, and I think it’s interesting to note that the author of the book actually started a relationship with one of the 12 year old extras.

“On the set of the film, Peyrefitte met the 12-year-old aristocrat Alain-Philippe Malagnac d’Argens de Villèle who had been cast as a choir boy and was a big fan of the book. Not only did Peyrefitte sign Alain-Philippe’s copy of the book but the two also fell in love, pursuing a stormy relationship that Peyrefitte chronicled in some of his later novels such as Notre Amour (1967) and L’Enfant de cœur (1978).

Alain-Philippe Malagnac was later married to the French entertainer Amanda Lear and died in a house fire in 2000 at the age of forty-nine, shortly after Peyrefitte’s death. It is unknown whether this was a suicide, even though Peyrefitte in his novels describes a “suicide pact” between the two, i.e. their intention to commit suicide if the other one dies.”