La maison sous les arbres

Atmospheric thriller / drama directed by René Clément, based on the novel "The Children Are Gone" by Arthur Cavanaugh, French produced and set in Paris with two major American stars, Faye Dunaway & Frank Langella plus the Canadian Barbara Parkins, it tells a story of Phillipe & Jill, an American couple with 2 kids, living in "the City of Light" for two years facing a marital crisis due to Phillipe's ultimately strange behavior & Jill's psychological problems. When their 8 years old daughter, Cathy & 4 years old son, Patrick are apparently kidnapped, Jill starts to uncover what's behind the mysteriously disappearance that might be related to her taciturn husband, Phillipe...

Slow paced & dreary, but effective on the thrills, "The Deadly Trap" (original title: "La Maison sous les arbres") keeps the viewer guessing, even if the end result was not that exciting and a bit too predictable. Some major editing errors, the low budget & a "made for TV" look to it, prevented the movie to became a cult classic of the genre like the moody & similar paced, "Don't Look Now" directed by Nicolas Roeg that was released about 2 years later, but it had its moments of skillful direction and nice shots of a gloomy Paris during winter time.

Faye Dunaway is very good in the lead role, from a devoted spouse & caring mother to a desperate woman fighting against her own psychological problems to remain lucid enough to find her children. Miss Dunaway's committed performance is a stand-out in the movie, elevating the final product to a "released to theaters" quality. A thirty-something Frank Langella, here some years before his iconic role in "Dracula", delivers one of his first experiences handling a quirky, odd, but somewhat darkly charming character, a kind of role he would be typecast for almost his entire career.

In short, "The Deadly Trap" isn't for everyone, but for fans of low-key psychological thrillers, the 70's & especially, the actress Faye Dunaway, it worth a watch.

Arty, moody, stylized, slow thriller is also a love letter to Faye Dunaway's extraordinary, sensuous face. Has a similar vibe to the later "Don't Look Now" (just substitute Paris for Venice). Well-made, but it does require patience, and the story does not really receive full closure. **1/2 out of 4.

From 1959 onwards (and with the success of "purple noon" (Ripley's first version),Clement wanted to become the French Hitchcock.He followed the rules quite well with the follow-up "les félins" then everything went wrong.After casting Jane Fonda ("les félins") he hired American stars for every "thriller" he made:Bronson,Ryan,Vaughn and here Dunaway.Why American stars by the way?They were all dubbed (with the exception of Fonda)for everybody cannot be Jodie Foster for that matter.

"La maison sous les arbres" is a would be suspenseful movie with heavy pretensions:a big set-up,where poor Dunaway is caught like a fly in a cobweb :her children are kidnapped and "they "keep them in... (well,check the title;it means "the house under the trees") No cigar ,and not even close.

Of all the misguided choices Faye Dunaway made in her film career after co-starring in the 1967 hit "Bonnie and Clyde", this French-Italian co-production from director René Clément may be the most perplexing. An adaptation of Arthur Cavanaugh's novel "The Children Are Gone", this kidnapping drama set in Paris looks mournfully chic in gauzy autumnal colors but rarely comes together. Bickering American couple from Laurel Canyon--now apartment-dwellers in Paris for the past two years while the husband writes a book--are thrown into turmoil when their two kids disappear while on an outing in the wife's care. Dunaway is supposed to be something of a dotty, unreliable flibbertigibbet, a child-woman acting out her whims who needs psychiatric help. It's a faintly ridiculous role, too much and yet not enough for any actress to make sense out of. The villains (who are strong-arming the husband into some nefarious doings) are ill-defined nasties who arrive on the scene to portentous music on the soundtrack (in the old days, the man would have had a mustache to twirl at one end). Released under a different title in just about every country it played--including France, where it was shown as "La maison sous les arbres" ("The House Under the Trees")--it's a film that goes nowhere...and takes its time going nowhere. *1/2 from ****

Well this is an odd movie. Frank Langella and Faye Dunaway are names of no small renown, and given the sort of roles they're known for, it's hard to imagine them in pictures of any lesser quality. The premise of 'The deadly trap,' and the story as it unfolds, suggests a mildly disjointed narrative and uncertain truths as events unfold largely through Jill's perspective - a psychological thriller, to one extent or another. These are all positive indicators. However, it must be said that a drama attempting the angle that this does rather requires subtlety to bear fruit - and sadly, that is simply not the case here. The film is rendered with direly indelicate hands - blunt and direct, so bereft of tact as to come across as somewhat senselessly melodramatic. Frankly, this bears the air of a made-for-TV movie of the most gauche variety - and if that's not an unseemly portent, I don't know what is.

I claim no familiarity with the source material. I'm not entirely sure if the novel is more of an issue here, or the adapted screenplay, or René Clément's direction, but in almost every way there's a brutish inelegance present that severely dampens what enjoyment there is to be had. Sequencing and otherwise editing is curt, rough, and has the appearance of disorder. So it is as well for brusque dialogue, characters that don't seem fully developed, pointedly inelegant scene writing, and a plot that for all of the astounding heavy-handedness feels very forced. I would like to think that the feature was crafted so meticulously that every seeming fault was a conscious decision to echo and emphasize Jill's fractured mindset. Yet so much about 'The deadly trap' feels coarse and unpolished such that I have difficulty believing the same individuals that so crudely built the structure could have also purposefully filled it with more underhandedly refined detail. Those flaws come across, after all, as simply just flaws.

Langella and Dunaway have definitely proven themselves elsewhere, so I distinctly believe the writing and direction can be held responsible for coercing them and their fellow cast members into performances that are sorely lacking of subtlety or finesse. The very orchestration of every scene is marked with a pained sense of artifice on account of all the blemishes. Even the antagonists are left unnamed and ill-defined, a shadow of a shadow - a boogeyman of unseen power and influence. There are, most assuredly, some good ideas here, and for that I quite want to like this more than I do. Yet so poorly has the production been managed that the picture fails to have any impact, any real emotional heft or expected thrills. It's just unconvincing. It's unfortunate - this could have been good. I think it was rather close to being good. But ''The deadly trap' is middling as it presents, and teeters into a display of ham-handedness.

Alas. There are worse movies you could watch, by all means. Maybe viewers who are especial fans of someone in the cast will find this suitable enough - and generally speaking, everyone has their own opinion. But I regret to say I think this is too much of a mess to broadly recommend, and though it's not all bad, there's just no reason to go out of your way for it.