Les Diaboliques - Will's Review

Movie legend has it that when director Henri-George Clouzot bought the film rights to the novel Celle qui n’était plus (She Who Was No More) by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, he beat Alfred Hitchcock to the punch by mere hours. While Clouzot undoubtedly made a fine movie, I'd love to see a version from an alternates inverse where Hitchcock got there first...

CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS
Michel Delassalle (Paul Meurisse) plays the principle of a boys boarding school, owned by his independently wealthy, but timid, wife, and teacher at the school, Christina (Véra Clouzot). Meanwhile he is engaged (quite openly) in affair with another teacher, Nicole (Simone Signoret).

Michel is an unpleasant and abusive man, ruling over his wife, mistress, and even the boys at his school, in an incredibly domineering, and cruel, way. 

As unlikely as it may seem, the two women (perhaps bonded by Michel’s abusive mistreatment) are actually friends, and they eventually conspire to murder him. 

Their plot is a clever one; after establishing themselves an alibi many miles away from the school, they lure Michel to travel to them in secret, where they drug him, drown him in a bathtub, then transport him back to the school and dump his body in the school's pond; it's almost the perfect crime!

Except that, when the pond is drained, Michel's body is missing...

The acting is excellent, as are the characterisations; when the timid Christina is clearly hesitant to drug her abusive shit of a husband, it's all the viewer can do to not yell at the screen for her to get on with it and waste the son of a bitch, and while her friendship with Nicole seems unlikely on paper, I never really found myself doubting it.

It's very close in style to a Hitchcock movie, which may sound like a good thing, but it's close enough as to invite comparisons, and there are a few scenes where the man himself could have, I feel, stretched the suspense out that bit further. Never the less it's a very well made movie. 

My only real gripe was with the twist (it's no secrete that the movie has one; it's posters even beg the viewer, again Hitchcock style, to keep the ending to themselves)... Once the body has gone missing, it's clear that there's a third player in the game, and with so few characters of note in the movie, it quickly became obvious (to me at least) what was going on and where it was headed. Sadly, as is often the case with movies with a twist, having guessed the twist, much of the sheen was gone for me long before the big reveal. 

There's a sting at the end too (a hinted second twist, of sorts) which I felt was completely unnecessary and a little silly, but it's brief, and easy to ignore.

It's also (although this is no judgement against the movie itself) not a horror film - which is becoming too much of a pattern in this list of TimeOut London's Best Horror Movies! 

It is a cracking suspense movie / thriller though, and well worth checking out.