Robert J. Maxwell A very European tale of an upper-class Frenchfamily in comfortable circumstances. They get along well, love each other, and have a beautiful child. The only problem is that the wife (Audran) is bedding some other guy several afternoons a week, the husband (Bouqet) finds out about it and visits the lover, who greets Bouqet with a bemused rictus. Bouqet has an awkward exchange with him, bops him over the head with bust of Nefretiti, and disposes of the corpse in an algae-covered pond. Audran knows nothing of this, only that her afternoon lover has done a disappearing act. During two visits from suspicious but very polite police inspectors, husband and wife both deny having known the deceased. Audran later discovers that Bouquet has been lying -- she finds her boy friend's photo and address in the pocket of one of her husband's jackets. Since she loves her husband, she destroys the evidence of his crime. A third visit from the police ends ambiguously.Now, the French have a sense of how to do things avec élégance and indeed I doubt that this movie would have been made in Hollywood or even in France during the era of nouvelle vague. It's too deliberate, too slow, too artfully done. And we don't see anybody's brains spilled out all over the landscape. Director Chabrol has done a fine job but you need an episodic memory of more than five seconds to appreciate it.The performances too are vaguely European. Everything is smooth except during rare arguments, and I love to see the French lose their patience with one another. Audran is an attractive lady, indignant with the carefully poised questions of the police. Bouquet is equally controlled, with the central point of his upper lip dipping somehow into his lower lip, something like a Peruvian tapir or like my gastroenterologist, Dr. Pyloris.Someone criticized the scene in which the kid drinks a glass of champagne but when it comes to alcohol France is part of the Mediterranean tradition. Younger children may be given "red water" -- water mixed with wine. It's all highly ritualized and there's little drunkenness. The musical score is sparse but perfectly apt. The photography captures on film a rather nice city and an even nicer country estate where a man can spend time casually trimming his plants. The British translation eledes some of the more colorful expressions. A good job.

MisterWhiplash Claude Chabrol is a director who has a vast (and reputedly hit or miss) career as one of the Cashiers du cinema alumni, and his film La Femme Infidele could possibly be counted as one of the top crop of his work. There's a control over mis-en-scene, as might be expected (as he puts forth, unexpectedly and hilariously in a song that plays from a car stereo at one point, it's French), that is precise, observant, but also never overtly manipulative- it's almost so held-back emotionally that whenever a character seems to emote it's either through deception or by just the tip of the iceberg seeping through. This makes it all the more powerful, particularly because of how the ending doesn't really resolve anything except that these characters are doomed with each other. "I'm in love with you like mad," says the husband Charles (Michel Bouguet, perfect at that very understated, sincere and almost sinister approach to relating to people, even when seeming to be kidding), as there seems to be a sense of total disaster heading for both of them. But it's more of an existential sort- the law is left most ambiguous of all- and it's that which usually makes the best of dramas in lock-step with cuckolded and cuckolds and the like.If one's already seen Unfaithful, the Adrian Lyne 2002 Hollywood adaptation (not so much remake) of this film, then one already knows certain big pieces of the plot. The important thing though, in comparison with that film, which is still very good in its own right, is that this time we get only suggestions as to why Helene (Stephane Audran, maybe her best performance) is cheating on her bourgeois husband with writer Victor Pegala (Maurice Ronet), and this is something that irks at Charles most of all. Idyllic comfort broken to pieces and shoved underneath is the context here, and it's with this that we see as opposed to Lyne's film a look not so much at the super-sexual and eventually melodramatic side of infidelity and the aftermath (albeit just seeing Audran's legs is enough to get some men watching panting), but at complacency in the marriage and parenthood of their only child. Even if the child actor isn't very good at expression (he says "I Hate You" and "I Love You" in the same note), there's always the level of discomfort in seeing the unspoken tension in the scenes with the three of them.And, if for nothing else, La Femme Infidele is a masterpiece of technique. So many shots and angles had me glued to the screen, knowing that there could be no other way to get it right. Surely the script leads much of Chabrol along his paths (the actual moment of murder, however, is an ingenious editing trick), and what isn't there under the surface on screen is assuredly there on the page. But it's safe to put Chabrol on the level of artistry with his new-wave counterparts for shots like the one with Audran lying down on the bed, creeping up ever so slowly, and then cutting to a close-up, the one moment when we see just a slice of conscience. Or when Chabrol gets the emphasis of violence with a quick, simple shot of blood trickling down. Or how he balances out perspective at the house: look as the husband is watching out in the backyard at his wife, her out of focus yet still walking forward as the camera zooms a little more forward. And the last shot- following up on what has been many a decidedly Hitchcokian angle or note put forward, with a contemplative 'Vertigo' shot of mother and son in long-view out of focus. It's one of the saddest ending shots in the history of French movies.It might sound like I'm hyping up this film up a little, but considering how underrated Chabol can be- in comparison to Truffaut and Godard and even Rohmer to an extent (who, by the way, he co-wrote a book about Hitchcock with)- La Femme Infidele deserves to be seen and re-evaluated not just in the context of "ah, it's French, and it's romance and tragedy." To say that it's better than Unfaithful is an understatement, and it's only fault is that, if anything, it could be a little longer.

writers_reign There are at least two ways of describing this entry: Early Chabrol and/or Vintage Chabrol. Depends on what you mean by love. Chronologically it dates from his early days as writer-director and if you are moved to describe those days as vintage then who am I to argue. Certainly it has Chabrol's signature all over it; the cool, almost passionless behaviour of the principals, the affluent lifestyles usually on the fringes of large cities (in this case Versailles and Neuilly) which could be read by those who have nothing better to do as a metaphor for the leading characters who could be said to exist on the fringes of civilised behaviour. This time around Michel Bouquet is in a well established marriage with Stephane Audran - at one point Audran remarks to their son that he will soon be ten years old - and although he seems to have little interest in sleeping with her, witness his polite rejection of her sexual overtures, he doesn't take too kindly to Maurice Ronet pinch-hitting for him. Having acquired Ronet's address via private heat he pays a social call on his wife's lover and almost as an afterthought brutally kills him whilst discussing the situation as one civilised man to another. Naturally Audran is in the frame yet soon enough the attention switches to Bouquet at which point Audran, realising what has happened, destroys evidence that could help convict Bouquet. Like I said, civilised to a fare-thee-well. Lots of quality on offer here, Writing, Direction, Acting, Photography all up to snuff and beyond. Highly enjoyable.

bucky_bleichert_lives I found the remake with Richard Gere and Diane Lane ("Unfaithful") intriguing in the way it explored the erotic pull the woman feels to her lover. It was very good at that. Most of the early scenes, especially any with Diane Lane, were very well done. Where Gere dominated a scene, on the other hand -- whether because of his acting, or flawed script or direction, I couldn't tell -- the movie felt phony and forced. Now I know why. "Unfaithful" tries to exploit Chabrol's powerful storyline, but wants to go in its own direction, too. For instance, the woman in the story is not nearly as central in Chabrol's movie. The story there is really about her husband, and his predicament at discovering that his perfect wife is having an affair. The wounded husband is much more believable here, and thus the murder scene does not feel as lurid as when Gere bludgeons Martinez in the remake. The method of striking blows to the head is the same, yet we understand the meaning of the blows perfectly in Chabrol's original, and the scene immediately previous, when the rivals meet and discuss the affair in the lover's apartment, feels very real and organic in Chabrol (though it is still surprising to find that the husband has come to confront the lover). By contrast, in the remake, Olivier Martinez plays that scene as part civilized troglodyte and part insouciant brat; Gere comes off as bordering on schizophrenia, or about to suffer a conniption -- a cuckold who's so de-eroticized that his sudden rage reads more as psychopathy. In a movie that purports to be about a crime of passion, the quality of passion feels more like a horror that has gone "off kilter" somehow. The scene is jarring, but not in ways that move the film along.Having seen both movies now, I do feel like I at least understand how the story might have seemed a good candidate for a remake. La femme Infidele is so good...It's so good I hardly thought I was watching a movie at all, but living in this story right along with the characters, albeit as troubled observer. It's a movie about the private conclusions that we come to, perhaps selfishly, that we don't share even with the people closest to us, perhaps because we are ashamed of our darkest feelings, those too taboo to admit.There is a sense that the story's protagonists do feel shame somehow (even in the embarrassingly relieved way the lover welcomes the visit from the husband) but are all too human in the end. There is a sense of desire that emanates from all the characters, who all happen to be pretending at playing one game or another while keeping secrets from one another. Even the perfect little boy is shown to be caught up in his own storms, to the extent that his role in the movie is as more than a signifier of a healthy, prosperous family's bourgeois pride. At one point he explodes at his parents, during a tense evening, yelling at them that he hates them both.This reading of the self in the throes of a very deep, selfish passion -- while at the same time trying to maintain appearances -- is masterful in Chabrol's movie, and I came away from it believing in the reality of these characters completely.I can't seem to put it into words too well, but I was very impressed with the understated way this movie examines the tensions that simmer under the surface of family relationships. This is the first movie I have seen by Chabrol and I have to say-- as someone who's seen my fair share of movies touted as "masterpieces" that turn out to be middling -- my faith in the power of film as a storytelling medium is renewed by this piece.