Chabrol's exciting, stylish, and complex film has added value as a fascinating excursion into Parisian student life in the fifties. Les Cousins is the story of the country mouse and the city rat: Charles (Gérard Blain), a wholesome, more or less vestal virgin of a country lad, comes to Paris to live with his sophisticated, more or less debauched city cousin, Paul (Jean-Claude Brialy). Charles's girlfriend (Juliette Mayniel), drawn to his purity, is seduced by Paul and his hedonism; she is a pivot between them, and her choice is telling. There is a perverse authenticity in the indolent cynicism of Paul's Latin Quarter life-typified by the orgy during which he performs a devastating rendition of a Nazi officer. Paul may be a disturbing, even Mephistophelian figure, but there is something suspect, vaguely sickening, in the irrelevance of Charles. Pauline Kael was one of the few American critics to appreciate the film and its moral ambiguities à la Strangers on a Train.