Les Biches (Chabrol, 1968): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 8.40pm
This film is part of the Claude Chabrol season at BFI Southbank. The other screenings of the film on September 6th and 27th and October 5th is detailed here.Time Out review:
The film with which Chabrol returned to 'serious' film-making after his
series of delightful thriller/espionage spoofs, this was also the film
in which he began transferring his allegiance from baroque Hitchcockery
to the bleak geometry of Lang. A calm, exquisite study, set in an
autumnal Riviera, of the permutational affairs of one man and two women
which lead to obsession, madness and despair. Each sequence is like a
question-mark adding new doubts and hypotheses to the circular (as
opposed to triangular) relationship as a rich lady of lesbian leanings
(Audran) picks up an impoverished girl (Sassard), and whisks her off to
her St Tropez villa. There, much to the distress of her benefactress,
the girl embarks on an affair with a handsome young architect
(Trintignant), only to find in her turn that architect and lesbian lady
are in the throes of a mutual passion. Impeccably performed, often
bizarrely funny, the film winds, with brilliant clarity, through a maze
of shadowy emotions to a splendidly Grand-Guignolesque ending.
Tom Milne
Here (and above) is the opening of the film.
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