Filed under: 1970's, Audran, Stephane, Chabrol, Cinematheque, French, Huppert, Uncategorized
Violette
Claude Chabrol 1978
Isabelle Huppert and Stepahne Audren
Audran is the mother; Huppert is Violette – the notorious Violette – the daughter.
Her mother wishes her to be prim and sophisticated, and has ambitions for her. “You wish you’d married a train engineer, instead of a car man” says her husband, affectionately. Violette has affairs, sneaks out of her racy street clothes in the bathroom half way up the stairs to the apartment, and devotes herself slavishly to worthless me who bleed her dry for money. She is infinitely needy, but iron in her will for – something, at the same time.
Very good, like a still life on moving film. The two women are great, and the husband is a very nice backdrop. Their tiny apartment, which is nevertheless well furnished, embeds you in the frenzied psychological state of, in any case, two of the inhabitants. Violette wants more, but she does not know what it is she wants, she wants it too soon, and most of all, it is not a want a need, but a compulsive, dangerous, immediate need.
Chabrol as always, pulls no punches, and his knowledge of the hidden operations of the human mind is alarming because he makes no mistake, and makes it all natural, even when the results are so unexplained and disagreeable.
Chabrol, Claude (master of suspense)
Merci Pour le Chocolat
(Nightcap)
2000, France/Switzerland, colour w/ subtitles
Isabelle Huppert, Jacques Dutronc
Cinematheque, Nov 07th 2005, late film, by myself. Sent out a invite at last minute to Adrienne, Nathan and Guilia, but none showed.
A great film – Chabrol loses nothing, but perhaps has become – more subtle?
This review gives away the whole plot.
The heiress of a Swiss chocolate company remarried her ex husband, a piano teacher, now established in his fame. She id Mika Muller.
It is crossing of two families – a beautiful young girl, who looks like Liv Taylor, is a piano player who was, for a moment, mistakenly switched in the hospital for the Pianist’s son, when the child was being presented to the father. (The Pianist’s son by a former wife, now deceased from a car accident, and Mika’s prior close friend). There is something mysterious here, it causes tension, which is explained through he revelation that the daughter is born from artificial insemination – her father was sterile (not impotent). Thus when blood tests were used to ensure that the children were switched back correctly the mother had obscured the tests, as it was kept from the daughter that the man who raised her was not her biological father.
In any case the crux comes in that this sharp eyed girl, staying at the house for a few days to study with the pianist, sees the wife, Mika, spill the evening liquid chocolate on purpose. Something is afoot! Perhaps – a young girl’s imagination? Or perhaps more.
The girl’s boyfriend works for her mother- a forensic scientist. The spilled chocolate is on her sweater, and is analyzed, and contains – a drug! And the Pianist can only sleep when he takes a drug. And the girl is staying at the house – the same house that the Pianist’s first wife was staying at, the night she dies, as they were friends and always stayed there when the Pianist and his wife were in Switzerland. And that night the wife had to drive out for the sleeping pills, and first had her customary drink of cognac, and than crashed, and died. Her system was full of alcohol and the sleeping drug – which she never ever took! The mystery has never been settled.
But the Pianist feels something afoot. It is all too the same, too disturbing. The beautiful young girl is like his dead wife, staying as well at the house, going out to purchase the drug late, like his dead wife – because Mika ‘forgot’. And Mike also – poured the coffee (the maid, it seems, suddenly to her fortune had the night off”.
“You are washing the cups!” says the Pianist.
“Why are you washing the cups?” – “What have you done!”
“What do you mean. I am washing the cups because…”
“You washed the cups that night too!”
And it is all true. It is reconstructed. And the young girl is getting sleepy at the wheel, and crashes the car, with the son beside her. But they are OK. The Pianist gets the call. “Are they dead?” asks Mika. “No”, he says, “you were unlucky this time.” He is not angry, but now he knows all, and Mika admits it. “I am nothing” she says – not artist, not drivin. “But you have helped me so much” the Pianist says – a humane and thoughtful man. “Yes, always others. I say ‘I love you’ but I do not love. Everything for me is so calculated.”
So we have our brilliant and subtle psychological model. She is obsessed with the possession of her husband. The attraction of her friend, his wife, was unbearable, as is the connection to the young girl. She is fond of his son, who is likewise directionless. She destroys the wife, and it seems is keeping the son drugged regularly. Perhaps she preserves his lack of ambition in this way. They must be like her, or belong to her.
But – and here is the interesting part – she is not really evil as some would think of it. She is pathetically evil, tragic and flawed. She is calculating but not in intention — only in action! Quite a model, quite a film.
