Filmed in his trademark reticent style, this is at the same time Chabrol's most glacial and most humane film, a masterpiece of suppressed emotions and fears. In none of the scenes the characters talk about the things that are worrying them. Apparently their lives are all complacency and conventions, but right from the start Pierre Jansen’s experimental, Bartok inspired score might tell you that appearances are deceiving.
Bouquet is a well-to-do bourgeois who thinks he has feathered his nest: he has a beautiful wife and a 9-year old son, and lives with them in a villa in the French countryside, near Versailles, south of Paris. Lately something has started worrying him: he fears that his wife has a secret lover. When he finds out that he was right, he kills the man, gets rid of the body, and tries to resume his life as if nothing ever happened. His wife finds out the truth, but instead of reproaching him for what he’s done, she tries to cover up his tracks for the police ...
The prolonged sequence in which Bouquet tries to get rid of the body is unequalled in film history and there are also many brief moments of great intensity, such as Bouquet coming home after the crime, looking out of the window, suddenly realizing that he won’t ever be able to return to the quiet and happy life he ever had. The three lead actors are great but it first of all Bouquet’s movie: although he was a respected actor, it was some kind of breakthrough role for him. The final scene is devastating in it's refined simplicity: two people realizing their good life is over, confess - literally confess - how much they love each other ... then the camera simply looses them ...
The character of the frivolous secretary trying to impress her boss with her legs is a caricature, otherwise: no false notes in this one.
