Um Tira Amargo

Poiret worked with Michel Serrault on several films, and wrote the script for La cage aux folles, one of the most successful French films of all time. He's a veteran in the industry, so Chabrol must have figured Poiret could improve the box-office figures for this tight little noir. Here again, Chabrol is condemning the provincial bourgeoisie for all the venality and murderous lust they're capable of.

Poiret doesn't disappoint. He's very rough with some slimy characters in this small town; it's fun to watch him dunking the lawyer's face in the sink full of water as he cheerily goes through the interrogation. He's a lot more fun to watch than Clint Eastwood ever was. The expression "pince-sans-rire" could have been invented to describe this actor.

'Cop au vin' (an inspired translation of the original title 'Poulet au vinaigre') is one of those films by Claude Chabrol which, when viewed, I have the impression that they were made with Alfred Hitchcock looking approvingly over the French director's shoulder during its production. The story takes place in a small French town where the banality of houses and the apparent dullness of the people create an atmosphere of threatening normalcy which itself is a prelude to the dangerous events and situations that can not be too late to show up. The characters are diverse, some nice and some evil, but all interesting and, in addition, with a degree of madness that arouses and amplifies the interest of the viewers. The cinematography pplaces the characters in context very well, revealing what is needed to arouse curiosity and hiding what we should not find out, as spectators, too quickly. Music creates or amplifies suspense. But in addition toHitchcock-like films, we can also enjoy a dose of French specificity in 'Cop au vin'. A 'special sauce' to use a culinary term in harmony with the titles.

The two-story house where Madame Cuno, a wheelchair-bound widow lives together with her son, the very young Louis, the postman who delivers the correspondence at a time when this is still being carried in envelopes that could be opened, could be a motel at the crossroads as in Psycho. It becomes the setting for part of the story and the object that triggers the plot, as it is coveted by some of the important people of the place. The story is quite complex, husbands and mistresses appear and disappear, more or less accidental car collisions happen, police investigations are conducted with very unconventional methods. In the end, however, it is not the police intrigue that gives the film its charm. I confess that I didn't fully understand it, maybe I did not pay enough attention or maybe it was too complicated. My interest was drawn to the gallery of characters full of charm and color and to the excellent cinematography (by Jean Rabier). Performers include Stéphane Audran (Chabrol's ex, the film is made after they divorced) and Michel Bouquet, who were among the director's favorite actors, as well as Lucas Belvaux, who played the role of Louis, an interesting actor whom I did not see lately. Jean Poiret plays the role of Inspector Lavardin, a role that would turn the film into a tentative head of a series that will be continued in the coming years. 'Cop au vin' is a film with many qualities, which remains to this day an entertainment that should not be avoided.

Adapted by Dominique Roulet from his own novel it doesn't take long to realise that we are in Georges Simenon territory here. Sinister provincial undercurrents, skeletons in the closet and a collection of morally ambiguous, largely dysfunctional characters. It also enables director Claude Chabrol to take aim at his customary target of the beastly bourgoisie. Ingredient X comes in the shape of the truly extraordinary character that is Inspector Jean Lavardin.

He is a maverick who seems to appear from nowhere, is answerable to no one, assumes the role of judge and jury and has his own particular methods of extracting the truth! Jean Poiret is simply superb in the role.

The convoluted plot is almost as labyrinthine as that of 'The Big Sleep' but the performances carry us through. Great support here from M. Chabrol's former spouse Stéphane Audran as wheelchair-bound Madame Cuno and inveterate scene-stealer Michel Bouquet as a flakey lawyer. He had previously appeared in three of Chabrol's worst films and two of his best. Sultry Caroline Cellier, married at the time to Poiret, is the vamp. The nymphet is the enchanting Pauline Lafont who tragically met with a fatal accident at just 25.

Chabrol again utilises his favoured cinematographer Jean Rabier and the suitably menacing score is supplied by his son Matthieu.

Striking while the iron was hot, Chabrol and the excellent Poiret followed up the following year with 'Inspector Lavardin' after which the character was consigned to the small screen. Unsurprisingly Dominique Roulet went on to write a Maigret television series in the late 90's. It is indeed a cruel irony that the follow-up featured Bernardette Lafont, mother of the ill-fated Pauline.

Critics at the time welcomed this film as Chabrol's return to form and although nothing that he did thereafter could really compare with the ones he gave us during his Golden Period from 1968 to 1973, he still produced a few interesting, unsettling and slickly professional pieces, notably those starring super Huppert. Strangely, an actor whose persona seemed ideally suited to Chabrol's oeuvre, Gérard Depardieu, worked with him just once on 'Inspector Bellamy'. Not only Chabrol's swansong but a film which has more than a passing nod to Simenon.

An early scene in "Cop au Vin" (or "Poulet au vinaigre") features a petulant Mommy's boy, a domineering mother and a cellar. Sound familiar? However, this is Chabrol and not Hitchcock though you may say that's the next best thing. "Cop au Vin" may not be in the front rank of Chabrol movies but this excellent account of typically well-heeled Chabrolians doing nasty things to each other will do very nicely indeed.

Naturally Stephane Audran is here; she's the domineering mother, this time confined to a wheelchair, and about to be evicted from her home by those nasty rich people. Lucas Belvaux is the petulant son and others in the cast include the wonderful Michel Bouquet, Jean Topart, Pauline Lafont and Jean Poiret as the very unorthodox inspector brought in to investigate a couple of mysterious deaths. There may not be anything profoundly engaging or even particularly memorable about the picture but it remains a highly enjoyable thriller and is certainly no disgrace to the names of either Chabrol or his mentor, Mr Hitchcock.

After another undue interruption in my ongoing Chabrol tribute – incidentally, I messed up the date and he will only turn 80 on the 24th of June rather than last May! – I plan to tackle it in earnest now, a task which will occupy me till the end of the month (to go along with a parallel Dennis Hopper tribute).

Anyway, this proved to be another stepping-stone in the French director's erratic but prolific filmography; by the end of the 1970s, his career had suffered a decline but it got back on track with this enjoyable award-winning thriller (incidentally, the hybrid retitling for U.S. consumption was an unusual touch), one that was successful enough to warrant a sequel – INSPECTOR LAVARDIN (1986; a viewing of which is to follow this one) – and a brief TV series made between 1988 and 1990 which seems to be unavailable for re-appraisal.

Still, for all the film's typical elements of detailed setting, nuanced characterization and ironic outlook, it does not quite scale the heights of Chabrol's finest work due to an essentially flimsy plot: indeed, even such later – and ostensibly lower-profile – efforts as the recently-viewed THE CRY OF THE OWL (1987) involve a denser and more gripping narrative! This is not to say that COP AU VIN lacks suspense or surprise: actually, the latter concerns most of all the iconoclastic Inspector himself – in spite of a dapper facade, he is blasé, forthright (even referring to a character's effeminacy as "AC/DC"!) and not above breaking into premises sans warrant or intimidating suspects to get at the truth – belatedly called in to investigate a murder, only to be met with a very similar one soon after and, later, the disappearance of a woman, all of whom are tied to a property development company whose methods are not the most ethical either.

Jean Poiret, ideally cast here and who would of course reprise the central role in the sequel(s), had garnered a reputation as a playwright and even secured an Oscar nomination for co-writing LA CAGE AUX FOLLES (1978); then in 1992, the same year he died of a heart attack (at 65), he stepped into the director's chair with LE ZEBRE (which won him a posthumous Cesar for Best First Film)! Incidentally, later on in the decade, he married one of his co-stars here i.e. Caroline Cellier (who, years before, had been the leading lady in arguably Chabrol's masterpiece THIS MAN MUST DIE [1969]); besides the latter, the film under review featured two of the director's frequent protagonists in supporting roles: ex-wife Stephane Audran (playing an invalid) and a very slim Michel Bouquet. Also on hand is amiably kooky Pauline Lafont (daughter of Bernadette, another "New Wave" regular and who would actually co-star in INSPECTOR LAVARDIN) – whose promising career was brought to a premature end when she perished in a fall, at just 25 years of age, in 1988!