Customer Reviews

Le Boucher [VHS]

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Superb. Excellent. And every other superlative you can think of.
Funny how when you see a bad or flawed movie you are full of words but in the presaence of a masterpiece you are speechless. From the beginning sequence in caves while the credits roll to the final scene of Stephane Audran by the sea you are speechless as before a painting which captures an ineffable mystery.
Most of Chabrol films involve the wealthy but this one follows two very humble lives in a rural French village near the mountains. The town butcher meets the schools headmistress at a mutual friends wedding and from there on the film follows their unusual courtship. He served in the military for 15 years and has seen his fill of bloodshed and waste and as a result he has aquired a rather maudlin view of life. She suffered heartbreak 10 years previous to their meeting and has kept her distance from men ever since. But then they meet and there is an immediate attraction beyond eithers control. The caves that Chabrol so evocatively photographs and which the headmistress provides a rather intriguing commentary on link the everyday goings on of life in the village with human natures primitive past. Meanwhile somewhere in the countryside a murderer runs loose. Chabrol like the master that he is suggests more than he tells. The viewer is given a rich assortment of things to meditate upon and many interesting paths to follow but the atmosphere of the film remains the real allure of this perfectly structured study of two lives. The atmosphere is created with music, excellent cinematography including some astounding long views of the mountain valley at different times of the day, and those interiors with the cave drawings which are echoed in Stephane Audrans apartment which is lined with prints and paintings. The mystery at the heart of this is the mystery of human nature. if you love Chabrol there is no more essential film in his catalogue than this one. If you love French film this was called "the most important french film since the liberation" by Le Figaro and if you just love film this will become a savoured gem in your collection.

According to the packaging this DVD is meant to be letter-boxed (enhanced for 16X9 televisions). Yes and no. On my up-scale DVD player the DVD projects in full-screen mode. Like most DVD players in the U.S. there is no X-Y feature to correct this. My odd ball brand region-free DVD player does, however, play the DVD in letterbox (though it needed quite a lot of correcting using the X-Y feature). Go figure. Since the film is a wide aspect ratio (the packaging doesn't state the ratio but I'm guessing somewhere around 2.7:1) it is very important that it be viewed letterbox. The DVD has an audio commentary delivered by a couple film school teachers who spend a little too much time entertaining each other, though I've heard much worse commentaries on much more expensive DVDs. The only other special feature is a trailer. Obviously I'm rating the DVD high on the basis of the film alone. Le Boucher is a great film. Chabrol's films frequently have a plot arch that is virtually flat. Everybody compares Chabrol to Hitchcock, and there are certainly plenty of visual references to Hitchcock, but Hitchcock would never tell stories this way, without melodrama, about people this irredeemably emotionally blunted. (IMDB has some reviews of this film that miss the point that the teach Helene is every bit as evil as the butcher.) Not every Chabrol film works for me every viewing but I've never been able to turn away when watching this film.

Helene Daville (Stephane Audran) is the school mistress in Tremolat, a quiet village in the Perigord region of France. She's a confident, attractive woman who had a love affair ten years ago and who now has no desire to become enmeshed again. Popaul Thomas (Jean Yanne) is the village butcher. He spent 15 years in the army serving in Indochina and Algeria. He's seen things he doesn't care to talk about. At a wedding they meet and become friends. He is strongly attracted to her, and brings her presents of choice cuts of meat. She likes him, even cares for him in a way, but resists anything more intimate. Then young women are found butchered in the region.

This really isn't a mystery movie and it isn't a tedious psychological drama. The way in which these two people are drawn to each other is at once curious and intriguing. Is Helene a woman who will put herself in danger because she is able to feel so few other things? Is Popaul simply a man who wants more than he has or is he a serial murderer? If he is a murderer, on what levels is he guilty? How deep are the feelings and complexities within Helene as, at one point, she keeps hidden a piece of evidence that could point to the murderer?

I found the movie consistently involving but not one that had me either guessing or emotionally engaged. Audran and Yanne both give outstanding performances. Audran's character seems cool and in control, but she unexpectedly shows deeper feelings, especially when she is dealing with the students in her charge. Yanne looks a little like 80 per cent Mel Gibson and 20 per cent Andy Kaufman. Popaul comes across as an entirely competent man, able to handle whatever might come his way. But at the same time there is a wounded vulnerability about him that can create uneasy feelings. And for old car fans, Helene Daville drives a Citroen 2CV, a model no longer made. It was the French equivalent of the old VW, cheap to buy, reliable, and easy to fix if anything went wrong. It's so ugly a car it has great style.

I thought the movie was involving and well worth watching. The DVD transfer, while not bad, could have used some work.

I remember after watching this film for the first time last year and the first thoughts that came to my head was, "how ironic." Sounds simple, yet when you watch "Le Boucher" the simple dramatic device of irony is used to such a disturbing force, that it really transcends anything that has been done with the suspense genre.

"Le Boucher" is a simple, yet complex story of the relationship between a school teacher, played by Chabrol's wife, Stephane Aubran, and a meat butcher, Jean Yanne, which explores one of the most universal themes: "how do two people express their love for one another when it remains unclear, indifferent." This theme doesn't entirely carry the film, but when it takes it effect, it does so, surprisingly, with an intense emotional impact. The film is also a disturbing suspense film in which the simple, banal circumstance often becomes a vicissitude of the psychosomatic. This is where the device of irony is used to a riveting degree, where each character faced with each of their particular incongruity are forced with utter compassion to reveal their essential, emotional feelings for one another. The result: a complete expression of love, tragedy, loneliness, and a disturbing psychological masterpiece.

And of course, one of the most brilliant use of the "macguffin" ever. Who would've known lighting a cigarette can be so suspenseful.

Le Boucher/The Butcher is one that falls into the love it or hate it camp. Certainly by modern standards, Claude Chabrol makes little of his premise - smalltown schoolteacher Stephane Audran falls for smalltown butcher and serial killer Jean Yanne - either as a suspense vehicle or moral drama. There are occasional hints of something deeper in the butcher's descriptions of the atrocities he saw in Algeria and IndoChina and which he has brought home with him to the outwardly idyllic backwater and scene of his unhappy childhood, but they're just left for the audience to make the connections. As usual, Chabrol is more interested in milieu than the crimes themselves, and his sense of place and community is impeccable without being forced, as his direction. Although the script is fairly thin, it perfectly captures the way comparative isolation and lack of diversion brings people into each other's spheres more than burning passion (in fact, Yanne reveals that its her ability to calm his passions that makes her so special to him). And it's telling that the two characters never have a romance: they don't even share a kiss. It's more akin to a drawn-out old-fashioned courtship - it's just that one of them happens to be a serial killer.

One thing that is particularly striking is that way he is able to use long, unshowy takes (some lasting several minutes) simply because his actors are up to the challenge, giving the film an unforced, natural flow. There's imagination and striking imagery when required - the film's most tense moment takes place during a fade to black, while a night time drive takes on a disembodied quality - but he's not out to batter his audience with technique. Quietly impressive, but you may need to have lived in a small town to get the most out of it.

The Pathfinder NTSC DVD offers an acceptable but far from outstanding standards conversion transfer. Arrow's UK PAL DVD does offer a better transfer in a slightly cropped widescreen ratio, but contains no extras.

Le Boucher is a smartly paced, ethereal film- eerie and suspensful, but also very tender and insightful. A stark realism permeates the work, which intensifies the suspense, the longing and the ending- once again not within the confines of typical Hollywood storytelling. The film is set in the Dorgdogne, in the southwest of France- very much a less modern, traditional, savage France circa 1969. There is an undercurrent thematic struggle present throughout, between the savage and the civilized, between instinct and intelligence. It is a work of fine artistry and understatement.

A Poetic study of lonely people [the schoolteacher and the village butcher] recognizing each other's needs, and dealing with darker impulses along their way ...... with an almost pedantic and analytical lens, M. Chabrol guides you through this maze with deliberate intent.

Deliberately paced and quite terrifying it is well worthwhile. The utter bleakness and isolation of the characters communicates directly to you. You are also clearly reminded of primitive urges briefly veneered by "current society", all too willing to ermerge, when an opportunity presents itself, and conditions apply..........!

You are left with a chilly vision of "what lies beneath" Country airs, without being unnecessarily graphic.

Unsettling "chemistry" between Jean Yanne and Stephanie Audren. SHE is especially terrifying during the final moments of the movie.

Disturbing/Contemporary.

This is a film about the austere life of a village schoolteacher in SW France. Something of a mystery because she remains single and untouchable, though much appreciated in the town, she strikes up an unlikely friendship with a butcher. A charming if homely man, he is clearly attracted to the teacher and they begin a cautious dance to get to know eachother. Meanwhile, it is apparent that there is a maniac on the loose who slashes women and leaves their bodies in strange places. As the friendship grows deeper, the teacher begins to have a deep sense of foreboding. She discovers a clue to the murderer, which terrifies her. The ending is a surprise.

What distinguishes this film is the consistency of mood, a mixture of lonely melancholy and yet a centeredness that villagers appreciate. The terror builds slowly, until it is impossible to avoid a conclusion she dreads. Audran is wonderful as her sadness takes over, shattering the discipline she has instilled in herself.

Warmly recommended. This is original and deeply affecting.

"The Butcher," ("Le boucher") (1969) is one of the best-known films of French director Claude Chabrol, (Claude Chabrol Collection), one of the leading lights of the French school of filmmaking known as the new wave (le nouvelle vague); he just passed quite recently. It's in full, gorgeous color, set in the lush, highly fertile, mountainous region of Perigord, France, and, aside from perhaps some clothes that look odd to a contemporary eye, has hardly dated at all. It's a cerebral, rather abstract drama/thriller, built along thoughtful, slower, European lines rather than fast, fast, fast American; still, it clocks in at a tidy 93 minutes, and is considered to show the strong influence of Alfred Hitchcock, thriller director par excellence (Alfred Hitchcock - The Masterpiece Collection).

Elegantly beautiful Stephane Audran (The Unfaithful Wife (La Femme infidèle)), Chabrol's reel- and real life muse, plays Helene, headmistress of the local elementary school, who lives above her shop. She is thin as a stylish woman should be, high of cheekbone, dressed in clothes that are evidently the height of contemporary chic, with her hair done by Carita. She loves the school's children and has good times with them. Nevertheless, she has never gotten over a bad previous relationship, and is repressed - and lonely. She finally, haltingly, begins an unlikely affair with the mysterious Popaul (Jean Yanne:Indochine). He has recently returned from the army and Vietnam to the village in which he was born and raised, to take over his father's butcher shop, which he too lives above. He is dour and working class, not particularly handsome, considered beneath her in village society; yet makes himself useful to her, gives her prime cuts of meat, paints her quarters. He becomes, in fact, her primary adult relationship - she really has no one else in her life --nor does he. However, soon local women turn up gruesomely slaughtered, in sadistic Jack the Ripper style. It appears that a serial killer has come to the vicinity, and Helene must begin to suspect the butcher.

The countryside, and the children, have been photographed with great affection and clarity. In addition to its truffles, mushrooms, and plentiful harvests, Perigord is also known for its colorful prehistoric cave paintings, and we see them too. The original, atmospheric score is by Pierre Jansen. Director Chabrol does a good job of building tension that mounts as Helene is forced to reach heart-breaking conclusions. It's a powerful film that is likely to stay with you for some time.

I pretty much guessed the killer's identity early on, which Chabrol makes it easy to do (unlike his mentor Hitchcock), and then feared the worst as the movie drew to a close. But then I remembered that the beautiful and elegant Stephane Audran was his wife at the time and there's no way a man would do THAT to his own wife, unless he was prepared to sleep on the sofa for quite a while! So, that leaves only one possible ending because we can't have dudes like Popaul (whose name shows up in the subtitles as Paul!) and his switchblade running around loose. Also, Chabrol has the guy fall in love with Helene (Audran), which makes him realize his evil ways must end, one way or another -- if only he'd met her sooner, eh?

I suppose the point here is that society needs to be careful about putting guns and other deadly objects into the hands of people in authority in the first place -- a concern of our own Founding Fathers as well, who were doubtful of the need to establish a standing army. Quite so. Popaul is a veteran of two messy wars France got involved in after WWII (Algeria and Indochina) and knows all about killing first hand, literally. His return to civilian life as a butcher, his father's trade, seems not to have taken care of the bloodlust and indifference to death and suffering that soldiers often feel (if they feel anything at all after combat) and have a hard time overcoming. Maybe the French army should have done a better job of counseling vets after they muster out, a lesson we also learned from Vietnam. War is hell on the vets too.