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"Alone with my murderer," says Trakl, a love story. The Périgord village has cobblestone streets and an old bell tower, everyone comes to the wedding party, including the local butcher (Jean Yanne) and the school mistress (Stéphane Audran). He's duly shocked to see a woman smoke, nurses a bashful yearning as well as war horrors, "I've seen a corpse of two." She's cultured and incongruously cool, with no use for romance. A deep-focus vista hints at sinister eruptions in the pastoral idyll, children playing in the background and chickens in the foreground and between them black police vans rolling in with alarming news. Civilized order and "the savage state," Le Corbeau multiplied by Psycho. Claude Chabrol promptly dissipates the mystery, there's only one suspect of the recent string of killings, the gentle lug immersed in spilled viscera. "Some blood is redder than others, but all blood smells the same." Sophistication can be as artificial a costume as boys and girls dancing in perukes and gowns, it dissolves to the gargantuan stalactites and primordial scrawls of the Lascaux cave. The bouquet of flowers is a leg of lamb, the cigarette lighter from Strangers on a Train also has a role. "Logic" and "freedom" are what one values most after a military stint, says the butcher, his voice rings outside his beloved's window until he materializes in the darkened classroom with knife in hand. Confession of guilt, confession of love, "I can't help it, it's like a nightmare." Naturalistically textured, perversely compassionate, the purest treatment of Chabrol's themes. The remarkable ride to the hospital is a monologue and a consummation, the cardiac beat of the elevator button and the desolate margins of the Dordogne are reflected in the fire and ice of Audran's gaze. Cinematography by Jean Rabier. With Antonio Passalia, Mario Beccara, Pascal Ferone, Roger Rudel, and William Guérault.
--- Fernando F. Croce |