The Stepfather

Jerry Blake (Terry O Quinn, Lost) is a man obsessed with having the perfect American Dream life: including the house with the white picket fence in the suburbs, an adoring wife and loving children. He believes he has found it when he marries Susan Maine and becomes the stepfather to her 16-year-old daughter, Stephanie. But Stephanie gets an uneasy feeling when she is around Jerry with his Father Knows Best attitude: she can see that there is a darker side behind his cheerful exterior. Could she just be going through the typical teenager rebellion against her new stepfather, or is he actually the same man who brutally murdered his family just one year earlier?

Michael Harding returns home from military school to find his mother happily in love and living with her new boyfriend, David. As the two men get to know each other, Michael becomes more and more suspicious of the man who is always there with a helpful hand. Is he really the man of her dreams or could David be hiding a dark side?

Synopsis : Après avoir terminé son école militaire, Michael rentre à la maison. Il y découvre sa mère en pleine histoire d'amour avec son nouvel petit-ami David Harris. Alors que les deux hommes commencent à se connaître, Michael devient de plus en plus suspicieux : son beau-père a toujours été là pour rendre service, mais ne serait-ce pas un leurre pour cacher ses pires travers ?

Michael returns home from military school to find his mother happily in love and living with her new boyfriend. As the two men get to know each other, he becomes more and more suspicious of the man who is always there with a helpful hand.

François Truffaut’s first feature, The 400 Blows (Les quatre cents coups), is also his most personal. Told through the eyes of Truffaut’s life-long cinematic counterpart, Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud), The 400 Blows sensitively re-creates the trials of Truffaut’s own difficult childhood, unsentimentally portraying aloof parents, oppressive teachers, petty crime, and a friendship that would last a lifetime. The film marks Truffaut’s passage from leading critic of the French New Wave to his emergence as one of Europe’s most brilliant auteurs.