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Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

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Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

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Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Reviews Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary? Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

“Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” withers in metaphor Hell

Jane Schoenbrun's third film honors and analyzes slashers — but skips the thesis

Published August 26, 2026 12:00PM (EDT)

There comes a time in every English-speaker’s life when they learn the meaning of the French phrase “la petite mort,” an adage that, translated literally, means “the little death,” and typically refers to the sensation immediately following an orgasm. Given the phrase’s innate poeticism, it’s often used by scholars, authors, casanovas and perhaps overly didactic filmmakers to convey the fleeting intensity of life’s most burning joys. But most obnoxiously, “la petite mort” is a favorite of black-coffee-sipping, cigarette-bumming, beret-wearing young adults, eager to remind you that the phrase can also allude to a part of oneself, deep inside, that has died — snuffed out by the pain of existence. “Don’t you see?” they ask between puffs of their Parliaments. “Everything has a dual meaning.”

That’s precisely why, upon first hearing that the metafictional antagonist in writer-director Jane Schoenbrun’s latest film, “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” is called Little Death, my body responded with a sharp, involuntary wince. Uh oh. See, it’s not that “la petite mort” isn’t a beautiful, lyrical phrase on its own; it’s just that its novelty wears off quickly. It’s not exactly the kind of metaphor you want to hang an entire film on, lest its relative simplicity give way under the heft of a feature film’s many parts. Then again, unflinching and sometimes self-important intellectualism is a major aspect of Schoenbrun’s whole oeuvre.

(MUBI) Jack Haven as Little Death in “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp........

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