The unfaithful woman
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The unfaithful woman |
| Original title | La femme infidèle |
| Country of production | France , Italy |
| original language | French |
| Publishing year | 1969 |
| length | 98 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Claude Chabrol |
| script | Claude Chabrol |
| production | André Génovès |
| music | Pierre Jansen |
| camera | Jean Rabier |
| cut | Jacques Gaillard |
| occupation | |
| |
The unfaithful woman (original title: La femme infidèle) is a film drama by Claude Chabrol from 1969. In 2002 a remake was made under the direction of Adrian Lyne with the title Unfaithful .
action
Charles and Hélène Desvallées seem to have a harmonious marriage. But while Charles is working as a lawyer in Paris, Hélène is bored in her luxurious home. Only the couple's son is still the focus of mutual interest. Suspicious of whether Hélène is still loyal to him, Charles hires a private detective to shadow his wife. After a few days, the detective gives Charles a photo with the address of his wife's lover, the writer Victor Pegala.
On their son's birthday, Charles pays the lover a visit and tells him over a whiskey that he has an open relationship with Hélène, which is not true. The lover believes Charles and leads him innocently through his apartment, but Charles is overwhelmed by his jealousy in the face of the "lotter bed". In affect he kills the lover Hélènes with a stone bust. Then he carefully removes the blood and fingerprints. He puts the wrapped corpse in the trunk of his car. On the way home, another car pulls into the back of the car. The driver insists on calling the police. Although the police appear, the body remains undiscovered at first, as Charles can pull himself out of the affair with a generous check. Then he sinks Pegala's body in a remote pond.
Meanwhile, Hélène stands in vain at her lover's door. He disappeared. But she cannot communicate with her husband. The mood at home is becoming increasingly irritable, the police repeatedly come to interviews due to a missing person report from Pegala's divorced wife, in which Charles and his wife deny that they have any closer acquaintance with the missing person. Hélène finds her lover's detective photo in her husband's jacket and burns it. The police come again, the two husbands confirm their love. But from the perspective of the wife and son you can see how Charles, always looking back, gradually disappears with the police.
Reviews
According to the lexicon of the international film, a “melodramatic thriller from the milieu of the French bourgeoisie”, which is “psychologically penetrating with a cool analytical eye and formal rigor”. "The focus of interest is not so much on the criminalistic plot", but rather "the elements of tension trained on Hitchcock refer to the deformed psyche of the protagonists behind the cultivated facade".
Claude Chabrol celebrates “here, too, the fall of the apparently idyllic world of the bourgeoisie, shows façades that have become fragile and skillfully dissects the horror of bourgeois everyday life down to the smallest detail”, according to the television newspaper prisma .
The Protestant film observer also draws a positive conclusion: “A story of adultery that culminates in a murder is presented by [...] Claude Chabrol in a well-tempered mixture of exciting elements and nuanced psychological observations. The film, which carefully penetrates under the surface of the pure crime facts, is good to watch from 16. "
Web links
- The unfaithful wife in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The unfaithful woman in the online film database
- Criticism in the film headquarters by Dieter Wenk
- Criticism from Ulrich Behrens
Individual evidence
- ↑ The unfaithful woman. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ The unfaithful woman at prisma.de
- ↑ Evangelical Press Association Munich, Review No. 483/1969