Mort un dimanche de pluie

Joel Santoni has made a handful of movies theatrically released."Mort un dimanche de pluie" was his last work before he went to make TV movies.It's also his best and one of the rare French thrillers of the eighties which seems to go somewhere.Like in the (much inferior) American "the glass house " (2001/I),an architect (Bacri) and his wife (Garcia) live in a luxury transparent house with their daughter.Enter a strange couple ,they have a daughter too:he is an one-armed man the father hires as a gardener(!);his spouse will be the daughter's nanny (who predates Rebecca DeMornay's famous part by half a decade );and the sinister couple's offspring is an absolute half-wit whose only pastime is to play a child's music box:these notes become infuriating after a while.It seems that the man lost his arm when he was working on a building site and that the architect has something to do with it.

Then it becomes a bloody violent story involving child molestation,blackmail,murders and madness.The first hour is sometimes remarkable,building a tension,a rising anxiety in the isolated mansion where the rain never stops falling.Only the scenes in the studio where Garcia works get in the way,displaying a black singer who epitomizes the worst of the eighties music ,and breaking the malefic spell. The last third is less satisfying ,verging on horror flicks such as "Friday the 13th" or even "the shining" .But there are strokes of inspiration:Nicole Garcia,running in the night in a red dress , the shrew climbing in a water tower with the two girls,or the poor idiot shedding a tear. "Mort un dimanche de pluie' has fallen into oblivion:it's all the more unfair as its ending is not what we generally expect when a whole "nice" family is involved.

David Briant (Jean-Pierre Bacri) lives with his wife Elaine (Nicole Garcia) and his daughter in a fancy glass house he built in the countryside. David is a very successful architect, while his wife is a music producer. One day driving out from his mansion, David is stopped by a man who hits his car with a trailer. The guy looks familiar, and suddenly David realizes the man to be Bronsky, an employee he had at a construction site in which he worked and where a terrible accident happened. Bronsky lost his arm during the occurrence, and there's nothing he can do anymore due to its disability. David feels guilty because of it, since it was probably his fault and the whole thing has been covered up to save his career. David is under pressure and decides to hire Bronsky as a gardener and his wife as a baby sitter for his daughter, not to spread around rumours about the misfortunate event, that could affect his achievements in life. The duo have a daughter as well, almost same age of David's, and they could spend some time together playing. Elaine can go back to work without worries, and David has his conscience cleaner, even if he's convinced that it wasn't really his fault. But things are not what they seem to be, Bronsky and his wife don't want only to be helped, they want revenge, and once insinuated in David's existence, they start to work toward their only goal: to tear the man's life apart. Shot in 1986 by Joel Santoni, one of the few movies for the big screen he directed and probably his best, the film is an excellent exercise in suspense and it's a precursor of such later US hits like The glass house and The hand who rocks the cradle. Bacri and Garcia are very good in their roles while Dominique Levanant and Jean Pierre Bisson shine in the parts of the creepy deranged couple, with a twisted mind.

Elaine Briand (Nicole Garcia) and her husband, the architect David Briand (Jean-Pierre Bacri), live with their six-year-old daughter Cric Briand (Cerise Leclerc) in a huge house he designed in the countryside. Elaine and Cric miss their life in Paris since they have no friends, and David is broken since he is waiting a few days to sign with his partner Alain Milles (Jean-Pierre Malo) an important contract of a project designed by him. When David is leaving his real estate to work, he meets a lame man without a hand, Cappy Bronsky (Jean-Pierre Bisson) driving a car pulling a trailer with his wife Hazel Bronsky (Dominique Lavanant) and their daughter Betty (Céline Vauge) on the exit of his gate. Cappy tells David that he lost his arm an damaged his leg when a building where he was a worker collapsed on him and other workers due to the low quality of the materials. Then he asks for a job as gardener to David and he hires him. Later he meets Elaine's former employer and friend, Christian (Etienne Chicot), who owns a studio, and invites him to visit them. Christian asks Elaine to work with him again, but now she has Cric; however, she asks Hazel if she can take care of her daughter during the day, and she accepts. Soon Cric changes her behavior with her mother that believes she is not adapted to Hazel. Later, when David reads the news on Alain's newspaper, he tells his partner why he hired Cappy and drives home, where secrets are disclosed with tragic conclusion.

"Mort un dimanche de pluie" is a French thriller with a tense story. It is impressive how the plot has not aged after almost forty years and keeps the viewer distressed with the cruelties of the psychopath Hazel Bronsky. David Briand is too naive, hiring a sinister disabled man for pity due to his feeling of guilty and not suspecting that he might have a revenge scheme. The final scene is kind of corny. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Morte num Domingo de Chuva" ("Death in a Rainy Sunday")