Not Pure Garbage

I explained how I thought it went deeper in the OP, but I'll try to elaborate (an open mind is a terrible thing to waste!).

SPOILER ALERT :)

I view this film as essentially a critique on post-modernism. It helps if you know the philosophical implications of this. Long story short: the postmoderns hold that all values are created. There are different takes on why and how they are created, but that's what it boils down to. So, for example, the taboo of incest is a social convention: created by society.

I think many people on these boards get it wrong. The director isn't portraying the twins as psychologically perverse, but rather he's saying these kids have been raised as true post-modern children: ones who eschew all of the values society has tried to give them. We see this with his academic parents. France, and particularly french academies have been hotbeds of post-modernism from the end of WWII until today. Their father's poem is post-modern and Mathew's lighter speech is post-modern as well. And it's clear the way Theo belittles his father that these aren't exactly "rule-oriented" parents. They have raised their children to be this way because it's how they see the bourgeois world.

In comes Matthew: young, wide-eyed American kid with American values. He's attracted to their rebel-without-a-cause attitude. Here's a real woman! Look at the way that cigarette dangles from her mouth as she's chained to the gate in protest! He is given pause in the way they treat their parents, but that soon passes. The excitement of their unconventionality, their love of film, of rebellion, and of the sexuality of it all brings him back wanting more. This is basically the cycle of the film: they shock him, but they excite him and he stays... through his molestation, through the loss of his virginity in the kitchen, etc., until finally they rebel against the state itself. To Matthew, this is too much, he realizes this is wrong: this is a value too far.

The parallel to this is the plot line of the twins parents. Now, they're not in the film much, but when they are, you can see how they are visibly disturbed more and more by their children's behavior but let it go because this is how they've taught them to behave. Even when they find them sleeping together. They are appalled but cant bring themselves to condemn them, so instead they slink away in shame.

It's this shame of the parents and Matthew's rejection of their values that is the ultimate message of this film. And that's what I mean when I say its message is a conservative one. It says that "No, the post-moderns are wrong. There are some values worth keeping!"

Respect your parents. ;)

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Why yes it is. Thank you! I actually had forgotten about it. Perhaps I'll write it down...