Customer Reviews

Death In A French Garden [Region 2]

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Death in a French Garden was a pleasant surprise. Having particularly disliked the other Michel Delville films I've seen, I wasn't expecting much more than one of those civilized and oh so clever conceits that keeps you at a distance with its own cleverness. Instead it's a wonderfully enjoyable, semi-surreal comedy of manners and premeditated murder that has a sense of fun to it. The directorial style is particularly impressive too, with one scene overlapping with another as the last line or shot of one becomes the first of the next.

C'est la Vie's UK PAL DVD boasts a good subtitled transfer but little in the way of extras - stills gallery, biographies and unsubtitled trailers for Les Diaboliques, Une Parisienne and Les Bijoutiers di Clair de Lune.

There's something enticing about suburban France particularly as depicted in this film. That says nothing about the physical attraction of the two central protagonists. He is a young guitar teacher; she the frankly delicious student's mother. She is slender and oozes sensuality. She comes to his apartment to return his tuning fork. Her very open shirt reveals pert breasts and no bra'. She kisses his hand, then leaves. Next time, the seduction is consummated on a chair. This is all scene setting. As the story unfolds, a woman with a limp, young and with a photographer's eye, starts talking pornographically to him. A hired killer appears. The mother displays an occasional destructive edginess; knocking his music sheets to the floor and spilling his wine bottle, apparently, for its mildly destructive pleasure. The husband has a vaguely sadistic power over his wife. The daughter admits to sleeping with people. The death takes place. The aftermath is convoluted. The end is a surprise.

P.S. In this version, the dark forces of conservatism have intervened. I remember seeing the film first, in the `arty' Cameo cinema in Edinburgh (before even its modest proportions became a split screen centre). The consummation scene began with her walking towards him, already on the chair, lifting her leg to get astride, then impaling herself on his erect manhood. She was in complete command; something that obviously displeased the censor. I remember the audience let out an audible gasp. It's a pity that a depiction of pure lust is deemed unfit. It is part of life after all, the characters were enjoying and they were both consenting! Is it that when a man displays lust, it is acceptable but in a woman's case it is not? (See my first four reviews and that of The Piano Teacher, to tease that point further).

Ian Hunter.
Author of `e-Love'.