Die untreue Frau

Claude Chabrol is sometimes known as 'The French Hitchcock', and while the two didn't exactly make the same type of thriller; it's easy to see where the comparisons come from, and both of these great directors are masters of their crafts! This is only the third Chabrol film I've seen, but once again I'm extremely impressed and looking forward to seeing more! Though I have limited experience of his films, Chabrol's thrillers to me are more brooding and personal than Hitchcock's; and while they lack the brazen thriller element that made most of Hitchcock's oeuvre so good to watch, it's made up for in panache and intrigue! The Unfaithful Wife puts its focus on an upper class French family in a big mansion somewhere just outside of a big city. We follow them for a short while until it becomes obvious to the husband that his wife's constant trips into town are a clue that she is having an affair. The husband then decides to hire a private detective to investigate his wife, and after having his fears concerned; the husband turns up at the lover's house with murder in mind...

The film appears to be so relaxed that at times you may wonder whether you are actually watching a thriller. But that is what makes this film so effective; Chabrol often lets his film settle, but there is always tension bubbling beneath the surface and the film is always intriguing, even when there is little going on. I won't spend too long talking about the acting and production values as obviously both are thoroughly professional and give the film infinite amounts of credibility. Most of the action focuses on the couple inside their big house and this benefits the film greatly as we soon get to know the characters. The central scene is clearly the murder sequence, although again Chabrol focuses on the build up rather than the actual pay off and the murder is as cold and brutal as it was obviously intended to be. The Unfaithful Wife is clearly a lesson in how suspense cinema should be; even more subtle than Hitchcock, this film manages to be constantly fascinating in spite of the fact that not a great deal transpires over the course of the film, and once again it's another great film on Chabrol's resume!

'The Unfaithful Wife' is really about a faithful husband, who will kill to save his marriage. This kind of fidelity is a chilling exercise of power - the film's many point-of-view shots are mostly his - with adultery a rebellion, a bid for freedom that must be crushed. It's not enough that Charles uncovers his wife's lover, he must sit on the bed they make love on, drink the same drink...

Chabrol's most perfect film, where character inertia is expressed in blatant artifice, both in the home and in 'nature'; where a materialist filming of materialists conceals an austere spirituality, embodied in those Fateful policemen. Like his namesake Bovary, Charles sleeps when his exquisitely beautiful wife offers herself to him. He deserves what he gets.

In Versailles, the upper-class Hélène (Stéphane Audran) and Charles Desvallees (Michel Bouquet) live a boring and detached life in their comfortable house, and their only common interest is their beloved son Michel. Every other day, Hélène commutes to Paris and Charles suspects that she might be cheating on him. He hires a private eye and a couple of days later, his suspicion is confirmed. The investigator tells him that Hélène is having a love affair with the writer Victor Pégala (Maurice Ronet) and delivers a picture of her lover with his address to him. Charles visits Victor in his apartment in Paris and introduces himself as Hélène's husband; Charles lures him saying that he has an agreement with his wife that tells details of her encounters. Out of the blue, Charles hits Victor's head with a statue and kills him. Then he dumps the body in a dirty lake and comes back home. Soon, detectives Duval (Michel Duchaussoy) and Gobet (Guy Marly) interview Hélène explaining that Victor is missing and her name is in his address book. When Hélène finds the picture of Victor in the pocket of Charles's jacket, she destroys the evidence and learns that her husband loves her. But the police inspectors are coming to their house again to talk to Charles.

"La Femme Infidèle" a.k.a. "The Unfaithful Wife", is another magnificent thriller by the master of suspense Claude Chabrol. The story of a couple with a routine life lacking passion and sex that is revitalized by the adultery of the wife and the murder of her lover by her husband is sort of ironical and tragic. The open conclusion is left to the interpretation of the viewer and is also a trademark of Chabrol. In 2002, Adrian Lyne remade this film without the ambiguity of the original film and including an inexistent moral dilemma, as the usual pitiful practice of Hollywood industry. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Mulher Infiél" ("Unfaithful Woman")

Note: On 04 December 2024, I saw this film again.

What Michel Bouquet does in his role as the husband to Stephane Audran's title character can only be described as an acting tour-De-force. MAGNIFICENT!

Audran is not bad herself, but a notch less than stellar. Or maybe her performance just pales in comparison to her co-star. As does pretty much everything else in the film. From a certain point onwards, it is Bouquet who becomes the co-auteur, as for as the viewer is concerned.

The film has a very remarkable score, which Chabrol uses effectively as if both checking, and challenging the Hitchcockian legacy of pronounced scores in the thriller realm.

With unmistakable, (still his kind of) nouvelle-vague elements, the film admirably reflects director's familiarity with the classic genre and its (then) modern subversion.

With unmistakable, (still his kind of) nouvelle-vague elements, the film admirably reflects the director's familiarity with the classic genre and its (then) modern subversion. The economy and brilliance of shots is such that viewer cannot take eyes off screen, not for one sec. The last shot alone informs a good lot more than an average novella. And demands a separate essay I am not gonna write. However, it becomes quite clear early on that this auteur, unlike some others, is not at all that keen on subversion for the very sake of it.

La Femme Infidele has all the bearings of a rebellion forgone, if you please. It definitely looks like the work of an auteur, but not just a rebel kind, but a mature mind, someone well on his way to become a real master of the medium: already he affords to be audacious, or flexible, every which way to fulfill demands posed by his art. This audacious flexibility in turn provides the auteur opportunity to comment, in his fashion, if not alter the rules of the genre that he is seen, here as well, rebelling against and compromising with.

Having located the man who his wife is having an affair with through a private investigator, a well-to-do Frenchmen pays the man an amicable visit in this slow burn thriller from Claude Chabrol. While the film ends on a strong note with a nicely ambiguous final shot, an emphasis on 'slow' really is required as the entire first half-hour moves sluggishly along until the point when husband and lover finally meet. The precious few minutes that the pair share together are unquestionably the strongest in the film with lots of tension and uncertainty in the air as the husband wins the lover's confidence by pretending that he has an open marriage. This intensity peaks as he listens to the lover talk about how gentle and loving his wife is, enlightening him to a side of his wife that he clearly has not seen for a while. The immediate aftermath of their meeting together is pretty riveting too, but following that the film again loses tension and slows down in its final third, never again achieving the excellence of the husband-lover meeting scene. The film almost feels a bit long in a way, but then on the same account, not quite enough time is dedicated to fleshing out whether love, lust or otherwise existed between the two adulterers. Michel Bouquet's towering lead performance goes a long way to keep the film afloat though. Same goes for Chabrol's fluid camera movements, Pierre Jansen's atmospheric score and the rather novel premise of husband and lover meeting on amicable terms. It is such a great idea that is no surprise to learn that the film has been remade no less than three times to date.