featuring the best"acid" hallucinations on film!

Stéphane Audran, Michel Bouquet, Anna Douking, and François Périer in Just Before Nightfall (1971)

Stéphane Audran in The Unfaithful Wife (1969)

Stéphane Audran, Jean-Louis Trintignant, and Jacqueline Sassard in Les Biches (1968)

Caroline Cellier and Michel Duchaussoy in This Man Must Die (1969)

Rod Steiger and Romy Schneider in Dirty Hands (1975)

Jacques Charrier in The Third Lover (1962)

Stéphane Audran, Michèle Morgan, Danielle Darrieux, Charles Denner, Hildegard Knef, Mary Marquet, Juliette Mayniel, and Catherine Rouvel in Bluebeard (1963)

Stéphane Audran and Jean-Pierre Cassel in The Breach (1970)

But what thick night suddenly surrounds me? JEAN RACINE

Stéphane Audran, Jean-Pierre Cassel, and Michel Duchaussoy in The Breach (1970)

Orson Welles, Stéphane Audran, Romy Schneider, Michel Bouquet, Jacqueline Sassard, and Jean Yanne in Les Biches (1968)

Stéphane Audran

Jean-Pierre Cassel

Michel Bouquet

Charlotte Armstrong

Claude Chabrol

A father injures his son. He moves in with parents who blame the child&apos;s mother. They hire someone to find info about her for an upcoming custody hearing. He and girlfriend secretly lodge at her boarding home to undermine her life.

La rupture

Totally Subversive And Profound

Though I&apos;ve always found it difficult to stomach the parallels between Hitchcock and Chabrol (another user on this site highlighted the similarities Chabrol shares with Clouzot, a comparison that I concur with, Chabrol sharing Clouzot&apos;s moral ambiguity/overall weltschmerz), it would be foolhardy to deny the broad Hitchcockian flourishes here. Dipped and dredged in LSD, the hallucinatory sequences in here nod reverently to &quot;Vertigo&quot; and &quot;Marnie&quot;. Yet, unlike some hitchcock staples (no gripes with Hitch here, he is after all my all time favorite director), there is nary a hint of escapism here. Instead, Chabrol plunges us head-first into the depths of modern complacency, a project that we are all complicit in.

The story itself is another virulently acerbic &quot;thriller of manners&quot; for Chabrol, capturing with Flaubertian honesty the farce upon which class distinctions are built. Other than Clouzot, I&apos;ve always felt that Chabrol&apos;s work comes closest to Bunuel&apos;s (no surprise that Cassel and Audran would also feature in Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie)- he brings a blowtorch to insipid, self-satisfied, hypocritical civilization, and dares to gaze into the vacuous abyss beneath. Like Bunuel and Fassbinder, he does this with consummate style and infuses his films with cruelly ironic wit.

Chabrol&apos;s films are always unnerving to watch because they come too close for comfort, and never allow us to be self-satisfied. He asks some terribly important questions: at what price are bourgeois myths of propriety, morality and civilization bought? In &quot;The Unfaithful Wife&quot;, murder is necessary to sustain the idyll, while this movie offers a profound dissection of bourgeois identity- in order for bourgeois &quot;decorousness&quot; and privilege to survive, it must posit an Other, the sordid, vulgar, ill-educated boor, even if it doesn&apos;t exist. Throughout &quot;La Rupture&quot; the viewer witnesses the creation of these supposed &quot;absolutes&quot;, the unfurling of the absurd narrative that legitimizes bourgeois entitlement- sully, tar and feather the peasant, the Other. Like homophobia, class prejudice is only an expression of the precariousness of identity, without an opposite to define oneself against, the suppositions invariably crumble.

Chabrol is an acutely intelligent, courageous and singularly brilliant film maker. Don&apos;t miss this deconstructive masterpiece...as an examination of class, I think only &quot;La Ceremonie&quot; would surpass this one.

ps i can&apos;t help but wonder if the eccentric, insular boarding-house here is an homage to balzac&apos;s maison vauqeur in his incomparable &quot;Old Goriot&quot;- both the altruistic doctor (Bianchot) and the moustachioed, absurdly eloquent tempter (Vautrin) are parodied/mirrored here

Though I've always found it difficult to stomach the parallels between Hitchcock and Chabrol (another user on this site highlighted the similarities Chabrol shares with Clouzot, a comparison that I concur with, Chabrol sharing Clouzot's moral ambiguity/overall weltschmerz), it would be foolhardy to deny the broad Hitchcockian flourishes here. Dipped and dredged in LSD, the hallucinatory sequences in here nod reverently to "Vertigo" and "Marnie". Yet, unlike some hitchcock staples (no gripes with Hitch here, he is after all my all time favorite director), there is nary a hint of escapism here. Instead, Chabrol plunges us head-first into the depths of modern complacency, a project that we are all complicit in.

The story itself is another virulently acerbic "thriller of manners" for Chabrol, capturing with Flaubertian honesty the farce upon which class distinctions are built. Other than Clouzot, I've always felt that Chabrol's work comes closest to Bunuel's (no surprise that Cassel and Audran would also feature in Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie)- he brings a blowtorch to insipid, self-satisfied, hypocritical civilization, and dares to gaze into the vacuous abyss beneath. Like Bunuel and Fassbinder, he does this with consummate style and infuses his films with cruelly ironic wit.

Chabrol's films are always unnerving to watch because they come too close for comfort, and never allow us to be self-satisfied. He asks some terribly important questions: at what price are bourgeois myths of propriety, morality and civilization bought? In "The Unfaithful Wife", murder is necessary to sustain the idyll, while this movie offers a profound dissection of bourgeois identity- in order for bourgeois "decorousness" and privilege to survive, it must posit an Other, the sordid, vulgar, ill-educated boor, even if it doesn't exist. Throughout "La Rupture" the viewer witnesses the creation of these supposed "absolutes", the unfurling of the absurd narrative that legitimizes bourgeois entitlement- sully, tar and feather the peasant, the Other. Like homophobia, class prejudice is only an expression of the precariousness of identity, without an opposite to define oneself against, the suppositions invariably crumble.

Chabrol is an acutely intelligent, courageous and singularly brilliant film maker. Don't miss this deconstructive masterpiece...as an examination of class, I think only "La Ceremonie" would surpass this one.

ps i can't help but wonder if the eccentric, insular boarding-house here is an homage to balzac's maison vauqeur in his incomparable "Old Goriot"- both the altruistic doctor (Bianchot) and the moustachioed, absurdly eloquent tempter (Vautrin) are parodied/mirrored here

A father injures his son. He moves in with parents who blame the child's mother. They hire someone to find info about her for an upcoming custody hearing. He and girlfriend secretly lodge at her boarding home to undermine her life.

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La rupture

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