L'inferno

Surprisingly good, in fact rather splendid late Chabrol. We start with a young couple full of love and optimism as they bounce about running their hotel, bringing up baby and making eyes at each other. The wife seems to naturally do this semi flirting semi friendly stuff with everyone and gradually her husband begins to become jealous. We are never 100% certain but what at first seems six of one and half a dozen of the other descends into the 'hell' of the title as the green eyed monster truly comes to fruition. Initially delightful, this movie gets as dark as it possibly could and we are gripped, even perhaps more than with a Hitchcock as the terrible finale awaits.

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.

I still think of L'Enfer as a great film, rife with psychological torment and anguish. It may not be Chabrol's best (as others have pointed out), but it is nonetheless very good. This is in my opinion also one of Beart's best performances. The cinematography is terrific, with wonderful contrasts between the idyllic, sun-drenched locale and the dark, tormented and claustrophobic emotional dimension. The plot is somewhat predictable, but the "meat" of the movie is on the psychological development of the main characters, not on "what happens next". Overall, I highly recommend this film to any fan of cinema.

Paul, an irritable and stressed-out hotel manager, begins to gradually develop paranoid delusions about his wife's infidelity. As he succumbs to green-eyed jealousy, his life starts to crumble. Each step on his downward spiral to madness seems to accelerate, driving him further along the path to a personal heck.

The story was adapted by Chabrol from the screenplay by Henri-Georges Clouzot for the unfinished film "L'Enfer", which Clouzot began shooting in 1964 but was unable to complete. One has to wonder how it would have been different in the 1960s, but other than the film quality, it would probably be very similar... the plot is timeless.

Both leads do an excellent job of being desirable and obsessive, respectively. Certainly an interesting film, and even though the concept is simple, it comes across as very effective and may be Chabrol's finest work.