The Unfaithful Wife (La Femme infidèle)

Rating:
Summary: Faithfully Chabrol
Review: Stephane Audran has a face that reminds me of Isabelle Huppert. Both women always have a game face on. We can never quite tell what's going on in their pretty little heads, but we know we should be on the look out.

Audran does this to perfection in "The Unfaithful Wife". She also did a great job in Chabrol's previous film "Les Biches".

She has such a sleek beauty to her it's easy to see why a man would fall for her and perhaps even easily to see why a man would go to the lengths her husband Charles does in this movie to keep her by his side.

Audran plays Helen Desvallees, a seemingly happily married woman who has a child, wealth, and a mother-in-law she likes (That's our first sign this is only a movie). What more could she possibily want?

Chabrol presents these people as if they are an average family. On the surface they could be your neighbors, but, the impression I got was there are a lot of secrets between this couple. There is never a scene where they actually have a conversation. It's all small talk. Do they really know each other that well?

We fairly quickly know what's really going on. Helen (Audran) is having an affair with Victor Pegala (Maurice Duchaussoy) and Charles (Michel Bouquet) finds out and trys in his own way to keep his wife.

The movie is never really suspenseful. You're never on the edge of your seat. Chabrol works in much more subtle ways. With whispers not loud bangs.

This film as many may know was remade in 2002 as 'Unfaithful'. It was diirected by Adrian Lyne and starred Richard Gere and Diane Lane. It was admirable but not as polished as this movie is. This movie clears up some of the pot-holes I thought the first one suffered from. I should also mention I saw the remake first. So don't think I bashed it simply because it was a remake. I had nothing to compare it to.

"The Unfaithful Wife" shows Chabrol at the top of his game. It was a time when he was able to churn out hit after hit and much thanks to Stephane Audran.


Bottom-line: Effective Claude Chabrol film. Has a nice setting and strong performances. Audran plays her part extremely well. Lots of choice moments here for film buffs and Chabrol fans.

Rating:
Summary: Chabrol's brilliant attempt at "Madame Bovary"
Review: 'The Unfaithful Wife' is really about a faithful husband, who will kill to save his marriage. This kind of fidelity is a chilling exercise of power - the film's many point-of-view shots are mostly his - with adultery a rebellion, a bid for freedom that must be crushed. It's not enough that Charles uncovers his wife's lover, he must sit on the bed they make love on, drink the same drink...

Chabrol's most perfect film, where character inertia is expressed in blatant artifice, both in the home and in 'nature'; where a materialist filming of materialists conceals an austere spirituality, embodied in those Fateful policemen. Like his namesake Bovary, Charles sleeps when his exquisitely beautiful wife offers herself to him. He deserves what he gets.

Rating:
Summary: The basis for "Unfaithful" is of passing interest at best
Review: Interest in Claude Chabrol's 1969 film "La Femme infidèle" is of course spurred by Adrian Lyne's 2002 remake "Unfaithful," which featured an Oscar nominated performance by Diane Lane. However, from that perspective watching the original is hardly worth the effort. The inevitable result of any comparison is going to be impressed with both the style of Lyne's version and the substantive additions to the new version in terms of the plot. In other words, I would expect few people to favor the original over the remake.

The basic story is, of course, the same: husband Charles Desvallées (Michel Bouquet) becomes suspicious that his wife Hélène (Stéphane Audran) is having an affair. Charles hires a private detective who comes up with the name of Victor Pegala (Maurice Ronet) and then goes off to contront his wife's lover. The key difference between the two versions is that the original French film is much more about the husband and his reaction to the affair rather than about the wife and the affair itself. Actually, "The Faithful Husband" is a more accurate description of the story being told in this version.

I want to make something out of the fact that the character's name is Charles, the name of the cuckolded husband in "Madame Bovary," but that would be pushing. But this Charles is neither blind to his wife's unfaithfulness nor incapable of taking action. Ironically, his wife treats her lover with more coldness than she shows her husband. If it were not for the fact we see her in the bed of another man there would be no obvious reason to suspect her of infidelity. Her motivation is never really explained, but when she turns to her husband in bed at night and he decides just to go to sleep, the obvious implication is that it is Charles who has driven Hélène into the arms of Victor.

Outside of satisfying your curiosity as to what Lyne was working from when he created "Unfaithful," there is not much else here. The DVD has the French trailer (without subtitles), so this is pretty bareboned. Consequently I think you will find "La Femme infidèle" to be of passing interest at best.

Rating:
Summary: The basis for "Unfaithful" is of passing interest at best
Review: Interest in Claude Chabrol's 1969 film "La Femme infidèle" is of course spurred by Adrian Lyne's 2002 remake "Unfaithful," which featured an Oscar nominated performance by Diane Lane. However, from that perspective watching the original is hardly worth the effort. The inevitable result of any comparison is going to be impressed with both the style of Lyne's version and the substantive additions to the new version in terms of the plot. In other words, I would expect few people to favor the original over the remake.

The basic story is, of course, the same: husband Charles Desvallées (Michel Bouquet) becomes suspicious that his wife Hélène (Stéphane Audran) is having an affair. Charles hires a private detective who comes up with the name of Victor Pegala (Maurice Ronet) and then goes off to contront his wife's lover. The key difference between the two versions is that the original French film is much more about the husband and his reaction to the affair rather than about the wife and the affair itself. Actually, "The Faithful Husband" is a more accurate description of the story being told in this version.

I want to make something out of the fact that the character's name is Charles, the name of the cuckolded husband in "Madame Bovary," but that would be pushing. But this Charles is neither blind to his wife's unfaithfulness nor incapable of taking action. Ironically, his wife treats her lover with more coldness than she shows her husband. If it were not for the fact we see her in the bed of another man there would be no obvious reason to suspect her of infidelity. Her motivation is never really explained, but when she turns to her husband in bed at night and he decides just to go to sleep, the obvious implication is that it is Charles who has driven Hélène into the arms of Victor.

Outside of satisfying your curiosity as to what Lyne was working from when he created "Unfaithful," there is not much else here. The DVD has the French trailer (without subtitles), so this is pretty bareboned. Consequently I think you will find "La Femme infidèle" to be of passing interest at best.