LES NOCES ROUGES/Wedding in Blood (1973)

Even as an avowed Chabrol fan I found this an odd one. The story and setting are vintage Chabrol - sex, murder and betrayal among the bourgeoisie of rural France. My problem was with the depiction of the affair between the two leads. The performances seem far to broad to me, to the extent that their frantic embrasses and groping seemed almost comical. Indeed, for a short while, I began to suspect that Chabrol was making a black comedy. I am loathe to blame the performers (Michel Piccoli and Stephane Audran are fine actors) so I must assume that Chabrol told them to play it that way. Maybe he saw their romance as slightly amusing. But it is Chabrol and even his lesser films (although many don't share my reservations and regard the film very highly) are of interest. The murderers are amateurish and only initially get away with it because of political pressure before fate takes a hand. The characters are too self absorbed to be too sympathetic. Maybe I was missing the point. Rating ***

MERCI POUR LE CHOCOLAT/Night Cap (1999)

The recent death of Claude Chabrol has reawakened my interest in this director. I've been a fan for many years but his death made me realise that recently I've somewhat taken his talent for granted. Often it is useful to go back and reassess films that we saw many years ago. We, hopefully, mature, understand the language of films a little better, have different values and a better appreciation of the subtleties of human behaviour which enable us to see things in films that we missed on a first viewing. A recent re-viewing of Chabrol's LE BOUCHER on television made me feel it was a greater film than I had originally thought. I was surprised to see how much of Chabrol's ouvre is now available on DVD (although sadly there is no sign of his "Tiger" euro-spy films - reportedly not good but high on my list of films I want to see) and I've recently gone through Lovefilm's catalogue clicking the "rent" button on a host of Chabrol titles. First to arrive is MERCI POUR LE CHOCOLAT and it is a perfect example of Chabrol's talent. It is a deceptively simple film, so deceptive that as it ended I was quite taken back - thinking that I'd missed something. I went back to the beginning and watched it again and it all fell into place and Chabrol's seemingly abrupt ending made perfect sense. The making of documentary included as an extra is particularly revealing (confirming my own interpretations) and providing a very welcome chance to watch Chabrol at work and talking about the film. Chabrol describes the film as a detective story but at first it seems we have no detective. Of course we, the audience are the detective, provided with clues to a crime we don't know about and another that has not yet happened. We have a suspect whose guilt is revealed to us simply be her behaviour rather than seeing any crime commited. Wonderfully subtle performance by Isabel Huppert who like Stephane Audran before her seems perfectly in tune with the director. Look out for the cushion cover. Rating ****

JUSTE AVANTE LA NUIT/Just Before Nightfall

The late Claude Chabrol doing what he did better than anybody - exploring guilt against the background of the outwardly respectable French bourgeoisie. Add to this two of his most sympathetic actors - his wife Stephane Audran and the always excellent Michel Bouquet (also teamed in LA FEMME INFIDELE) and a plot that starts with a murder and you know you are in for something special. There is no mystery here as we see the murder in the opening minutes of the film (which begins with a visual quote from Hitchcock's PSYCHO) because as I said above Chabrol's interest lies not with the crime but with the guilt - and it is not necessarily the guilt felt by the murderer. For, being a Chabrol film, everybody else in the film becomes equally guilty after the fact, a witness, the victim's husband, the muderer's wife, even the police. And, of course, it's as French as a shrug of the shoulders. Rating ****

LA FEMME INFIDELE (1968)

LA FEMME INFIDELE is one of Claude Chabrol's greatest films and one of his most subtle explorations of human behaviour. A successful business man lives happily with his wife and son in a beautiful house in the suburbs of Paris. The couple seem very much in love and the husband (brilliantly played by Michel Bouquet) is drifting contentedly into middle-age. Slowly he begins to feel that his wife may be unfaithful. A hired private detective confirms his worst fears. The husband visits the lover (nicely characterised by Maurice Ronet) and tells him that he and his wife have an open relationship but when he sees one of his ammiversary presents to his wife he suddenly kills the lover. A police investigation leads the police to the couple. The strength of the film is in the very subtle way Chabrol shows us everything quite impassively and allows us to interpret what we see. Is the story the husband tells the lover true ? We never know for sure. The murder seems more motivated by the discovery of the anniversary present which indicates an emotional involvement than by the wife's physical infidelity, but we never know for sure. The husband seems content that life will go on as before (although again the subtle symbolism of the jigsaw with a missing piece should not be ignored). The wife's discovery of the evidence against her husband and her destruction of it has been taken by some to indicate that when the police return at the end of the film that they have come to arrest her but these reviewers miss the other evidence of his involvement which is the private detective. Do they come for the husband or the wife. Chabrol doesn't tell us and ultimately it makes no difference to the power of the film which is, above all, a love story. Chabrol (along with Truffaut) has always been one of my favourite directors of the French New Wave and it shows all his strengths and none of his weaknesses. I've used the word subtle several times in this piece and make no apologies for using it again to describe the way the spirit of Hitchcock hovers over this film, especially in the scenes involving the murder and disposal of the corpse. But Chabrol doesn't just ape Hitchcock as, say, Brian De Palma does, and every foot of the movie is unmistakeably Chabrol who has learned from the master rather than being content to simply copy him. I first saw this film nearly forty years ago and it has lost none of its power...I had forgotten, however, just how beautiful and a great actress Stephane Audran is. Rating *****