|
The trampling of innocence is abrupt and brutal: Brahms plus the roar of a marauding car, then a tilt down from a church tower to the moppet's chalk outline on the blood-stained asphalt. The shattered father (Michel Duchaussoy) emerges as a numbed executioner, from children's books he moves to a black notebook of vengeful thoughts. "The tip of my pen on this paper is like everything else in the world, a coincidence." In muddy Brittany the castle of the culprit (Jean Yanne), "a caricature of a perfectly evil man." The meet-the-bourgeoisie long take is a bit of virtuosity that keeps framing and reframing the living-room tableau until a sharp cut introduces the ogre, the dinner table is theater of cruelty full of mortified glares and a matriarch who caws with laughter. Getting to know Yanne's sister-in-law (Caroline Cellier) and son (Marc Di Napoli) complicates the quest for retribution—twice the protagonist has the chance to snuff out the scoundrel (on the edge of a crumby precipice and in the middle of a maritime void), though for Claude Chabrol murder remains a family affair. "His killing will merely be the gesture of a man tossing away the useless peel of a fruit slowly enjoyed to the core." The novelist is asked about the nouveau roman but his tastes run to The Iliad and The Odyssey, thus a streamlined analysis of revenge out of Lang or Mann. Stirring ambiguity expands the dour thriller format, both the hero's vacillation and the villain's joie de vivre are recognized by Chabrol's perverse humanism. The scattered chessboard, teary confessions with roasted duck, Maurice Pialat's William Demarest side as the police superintendent. Chilly waters receive the sacrifice, less admission of guilt than act of love. Cinematography by Jean Rabier. With Anouk Ferjac, Louise Chevalier, Guy Marly, Dominique Zardi, Lorraine Rainer, and Jean-Louis Maury.
--- Fernando F. Croce |