An overall disappointing film, building up one's expectaion for a climax that never comes, and layers of complexities that are never delivered.
Billed to be a Hitchcockian derivative , but the careful emulation is merely superficial. Hitchcock is quite honest, in the sense that his film always tells you a bit about his private phobia and taboos, and after a few films you get in on his private jokes; so this engagement often holds a fan. Chabrol can be far more emotionally distant, with a twist of the stereotypically Gallic over cleverness---you'll know what I mean when you get to the end, the interrogation scene. At any event, when you keep that stance in a tragedy like a child's death, you run the risk of alienating the audience. Which Chabrol did. All the characters in the film are like cardboard figures in the director's mediocre little game, with the same presence of cut-out pieces, and as much purpose.
But Chabrol being Chabrol and me being me, there are elements of the film that I manage to salvage from this wreck of a film. 3 examples:
- The conversation between Charles and Philippe in the youth's study, on the very personal, intimate way of deaths in Homer's "Iliad". I would recommend Fitzgerald's translation if you live in an English-speaking country.
- The opening and closing music: I believe it is from Mahler's song cycle, "Kindertotenlieder" ("Songs of a Child's Death"), even though I can't place which of the 5 songs it is. But one thing I am more certain: the singer is definitely Kathleen Ferrier, one of my favorite interpretor of Mahler's Lieder, along with Mme. Baker.
- The heaving body of water in the ocean, seen from the side of a sail-boat. So well captured that it is dizzying.
