Die Hölle

Reality, or fantasy is the immediate question posed in Claude Chabrol's L'Enfer. The man who carries the mantel the 'French Hitchcock' Chabrol delivers a taut, bare to the bones thriller.

When husband Paul (Francois Cluzet) begins to believe his beautiful, flirtatious wife Nelly (Emmanuelle Beart) is fooling around, his psychological demise is quick, and intense.

Chabrol brings us the story primarily from Paul's point of view, leaving many of the ambiguities, as well as the uncertainties of this tale to our own imagination.

From a script of Henri-Georges Clouzot (Diabolique, Wages of Fear) written in 1964, Chabrol updates the original (Clouzot never finished his version due to failing health, he died in 1977) giving it the contemporary setting and dialogue, but maintaining a style of presentation consistent with the thrillers of that era.

I love this early exchange: Nelly: "You're following me, Paul." Paul: "Why would I, is there any reason?" Nelly: "No, but if you keep it up, there will be."

Emmanuelle Beart shows why she is one of the world's great stars. American audiences have yet to have the best of Beart, who's English speaking debut (Mission:Impossible) seemed uneven, almost clumsy. But here she delivers on all cylinders: a beautiful seductress. Calculating? Unfaithful? We'll see.

Highly recommended.

Chabrol will always be Chabrol - sometimes less, rarely if ever more (maybe in La Femme Infidele...). But he's Chabrol, God bless him: love, lakes, bourgeoisie, jealousy, sex, meals, bonhomie, kids who appear and disappear, murderous thoughts, weird surrealism right before the end. You can set your watch by him. Emmanuel Beart is unbelievably sexy. And the film is a perfect illustration of some (dimly understood by me) Lacanian theories: sexual intercourse's dream of fusion is impossible, for example. Having possessed the ideal object, Cluzet knows that, in fact, one possesses nothing. Everything that makes Beart alluring also makes her dangerous in that she freely chooses...whatever she freely chooses. Freely choosing fidelity means that any moment you can freely choose infidelity. So a guy just can't win. That's why DeCordova in Bunuel's El (adroitly cited by another one of the readers here) pulls out the needle and thread. This film has none of the humor and acuity of Bunuel's neglected masterpiece. But it's Chabrol, and he's doing his thing. That ain't nothing...As a study of a man's descent from jealousy into madness, however, the film is powerful and well made but not super subtle.

If this film represents a faithful adherence to Clouzot's original script, one would have to say that the story may be regarded as the absolute apex/exemplar of Clouzot's understanding of psychology. At the same time, L'Enfer is absolutely a Claude Chabrol film, and the fact that it rests comfortably in either canon attests to the lasting parallels between the two masters.

As with all of Chabrol's foremost creations, this is incisive social commentary masquerading under the banal tag of "psychological thriller". Though the film can be enjoyed without any deeper engagement with or meditation on its themes of Othello-esquire obsession/jealousy, I think some thought will reveal it to be a far more rewarding film than a superficial viewing might suggest.

Situating/contextualizing the film in Chabrol's vast corpus of work, one finds in "L'Enfer" another nightmarish journey into the hazards of bourgeois sterility. Though one might say that the work is naturalistic in some respects (the intense violence that simmers beneath the genteel exterior is revealed in his disdainful disparagement of the neighboring competition), that the overreaching, emotionally volatile and profoundly sensitive husband is particularly prone to this type of neurosis, the telling proclamation of "sans fin" that closes the film suggests that the narrative is not one of isolated particulars, but a general affliction, a self-perpetuating tragedy engendered by flawed social mechanisms.

Throughout his career, Chabrol has been especially critical of the life-denying entropy and suffocating claustrophobia of bourgeois marriage, a plight where the insatiably voracious woman feels her haplessness and subordination most acutely. This, in some respects, might be his finest evaluation of marriage and erotic love in general. The tensions explored throughout the film are far from novel, again we bear witness to the irresolvable Romantic preoccupation, the desire to possess and identify with a subjective other. Again, as with "Les Bonnes Femmes", we see the carnivorous, destructive male principle, eager to subdue, asphyxiate, smother and ultimately devour irrepressible femininity.

Yet lest we distance ourselves from Paul's evident psychosis, Chabrol implicates marriage as an institution endorsed by society at large. Note Paul's perverse, masochistic pleasure in fabricating these outlandish fantasies, particularly the wild reverie of Emanuelle Beart entertaining the entire hotel in the attic. Is this the only way to preserve erotic love in the nauseating ennui of marriage, to continually reinvent the Other and, through wild imaginings, make him/her a stranger so as to escape the concreteness of conjugal reality? On another level, the film might be read as an Adlerian representation of modern neurosis, of a nervous man who is inadequately equipped for the rigours of social expectation, whose overreaching demand for absolute order and unity invariably drive him to dementia and a flight from reality. Chimeras of success and masculine authority elude him, undermined by personal insecurities and a willful, independent wife. How then, does he compensate for his lack of control? Refuge in the sadistic alternate reality that he manufactures throughout the movie.

Technically, this movie is almost immaculate, featuring outstanding performances (Emmanuelle Beart is a force of nature) and repeated viewings affirm that it is a movie of great understanding. I'm not sure if this review made any sort of sense at all, but at the end of the day all I can do is urge you to immerse yourself in "L'Enfer".

The owner of the Hotel Du Lac, Paul Prieur (François Cluzet), gets married with the beautiful and sexy Nelly (Emmanuelle Béart) and they have a boy. Nelly loves Paul and is pleasant with guests, and the insecure Paul feels that she is a woman out of his league.

When Nelly spends some time with the handsome guest Martineau (Marc Lavoine), Paul follows her and becomes paranoid and delusional believing that she is unfaithful to him. His increasing obsession turns into madness that ends in an announced tragedy.

"L'Enfer", a.k.a. "Hell" (1994), is a dramatic tale of insecurity, paranoia and madness by Claude Chabrol, with the story of a man that lives in hell with his jealousy and brings this hell to the life of his wife. Last time that I saw this film was on 23 April 2000 and the story is timeless and has not aged. The tragic conclusion is predictable and my only remark is the attitude of Doctor Arnoux, who should have foreseen that the safety of Nelly was in danger with the insane Paul. Emmanuelle Béart is wonderfully cast to justify the obsession of Paul. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Ciúme - O Inferno do Amor Possessivo" ("Jealousy - The Hell of the Possessive Love")

Note: On 04 February 2018, I saw this film again.

Note: On 07 January 2025, I saw this film again.

Very good film, one of the last of Claude Chabrol, with excellent performances by Emmanuelle Beart and Francois Cluzet. Although not the best film of Chabrol, it is one of the most competent (and disconcerting) films to deal with the subject of sick and obsessive jealousy. Merit also for the end of the film and for the fact that we will never be shown if the woman is unfaithful or not.

Originally written by screenwriter and director Henri Georges Clouzot, "l'enfer", years later he had his rights sold by his widow to a producer who offered him to Claude Chabrol. His plot revolves around Paul Prieur, a man possessed by a sick jealousy of his wife.

No doubt this is a fascinating study that shows how one's insecurities can affect, in addition to his own life, those of all who find themselves around him.

Although considered as one of the great filmmakers of French cinema, this film is not considered among the best achievements of Chabrol, such as "le beau serge", "les cousins", "une affaire de femmes", "la ceremonie" , among others.