La fleur du mal

I saw "La fleur du mal" at the San Sebastian Film Festival last september. Certainly, this last Chabrol film isn't a great movie, though it's not an awful movie either. One has the feeling while watching it (and after having it watched)that it is all filmed with too much distance, too cold, no emotions whatsoever. Chabrol's study of a french, provincial, upper-bourgeousie family, that is rotten to its roots (they are all a bunch of hypocrites), lacks of passion, interest (you have seen this story many times on film) and, in my opinion, of humor and sarcasm. But I insist, its not a terrible movie(with ticket prices so high nowadays, at least here in spain, sometimes you just have to get mad while watching some movies lately); its just too long, too conventional and too plain.

"La Fleur du Mal" (Flower of Evil) unfolded like a multi-layered nineteenth-century novel. There was a plot involving politics, a plot involving romance, and the deep family secrets that appear to have afflicted the characters in a multi-generational curse. One of the characters even refers to their lives as the equivalent of a novel by Emile Zola.

I appreciated the rich psychological levels of the characters and the fine performances under the direction of Claude Chabrol. The character of Aunt Line as played by Suzanne Flon was especially moving. There were effective emotional moments involving reverie and interior monologue that conveyed great depth of feeling. In American films, we would have been given generic "flashback" scenes. In the more subtle European film-making style, the performer conveyed the past through emotional expression.

Like so many of the great nineteenth-century novels where everyone seems to be marrying his or her cousin, so too in "La Fleur du Mal" one of the plot lines focuses on a young man and woman deeply in love, who realize that their bloodlines are too close for comfort. Some of the film's most intense scenes are those in which the couple seeks to understand their complex family ties.

Interestingly, this eclectic film is not without dark humor, including a truly bizarre sequence related to an accidental murder. Stylistically, this is a film experience with lush cinematography of the contemporary Bordeaux region, filled with sensitive compositional choices and careful set-ups. If the characters had been outfitted in nineteenth-century costumes, this really could have been a Zola novel.

This is a classical Chabrol film about the nature of crime. Chabrol gives major importance to the relationships in a family. The family is a normal family at first sight. But as the film proceeds we learn that there were betrayals, crimes and a murder in the family history. The grandfather has collaborated with the Nazis during the German occupation and has informed against his son and caused his death. Aunt Line was trialed for killing his father and found not guilty. Now Anne is the candidate for mayor and his husband Gerard is uneasy about his wife's political career and he seems to do everything to prevent her being elected as mayor. Love and crime are both inherits from one generation to the other. The woman characters of La Fleur du Mal are very interesting. They are strong, intelligent and giving. "Sooner or later one must pay for his/her crime" is one of the themes of the movie.

The picture talks upon a bourgeois family formed by parents previously divorced (Bernard Le Coq and Natalie Baye) , sons (Benoit Maginel and Melanie Doutey) and grandmother (Suzanne Flon). Terrible secrets emerge and are creating a spiral of consequences until lead to a tragic final .

The movie is well directed by Claude Chabrol who's deemed to be a master in the suspense genre , besides is considered as an initiator of the new wave or nouvelle vague , this movement had got splendor during the 60s . It's habitual in Chabrol films to deal with particular issues, thus : Obsession , adulteries , assassinations , jealousy , treason and he makes a penetrating description of the middle bourgeois class . All those characters are well narrated in the film . The cast is excellent , Benoit Maginel is good , Melanie Doutey is beautiful and attractive . Natalie Baye and the veteran Suzanne Flonn are impressive. Cinematography by Eduardo Serra (Young of the earring pearl ) is nicely made although mostly developed at interior scenarios. The film will appeal to suspense fans and Claude Chabrol moviegoers. Rating : Above average. Well catching.

Director Chabrol takes on the French bourgeois so insidiously, so quietly, so subtly, that you don't realize his cinematic scalpel has just removed several layers of sensitive skin; this family-based thriller shows a woman running for office, examines her philandering husband, and zeroes in on two slightly incestuous slightly related children, all under the care of a quietly smiling, deadly caretaker, who smiles while encouraging the tots to misbehave.

The plot, such as it is, could be frustrating if the viewer is looking for any kind of forward action--this is an expose of empty morality, and hardly qualifies as a suspense film (you might even ask--when will this end?), but in considering the gorgeously cinematic interiors (and beach setting) in contrast to the vapid emptiness each character ultimately reveals, this could be a film you like very much; it's typically French in that it tends to look inside rather than outside, examine character development in lieu of action perpetrated by a hero.