Customer Reviews

A Double Tour

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

 

 

This film explores one of the favorite issues of Chabrol. The decadence of a wealthy family involved into a dark affair respect the mistress of a bored husband and a dysfunctional family.

This bored marriage has two sons, a beautiful daughter who is in love with a good for nothing (Jean Paul Belmondo) who has an unemployed and unworried friend, and his brother a man of good manners and weird behavior.

An undated suspense film whose Hitchcokian approach is more than obvious, specially in the opening sequence that works out as an homage to "Vertigo".

Don't miss it.

I enjoyed this movie very much. I was lucky to see it without reading the DVD cover (avert your eyes from the image of the cover on this site!!) or any reviews of it, and that's the best way to see this one. That's because this movie is of a particular genre, but, unless you've been tipped off, you won't realize which genre until 2/3 of the way through it. Then, suddenly, it will dawn on you - "Oh! I get it! That's what's been set up for me in the 1st hour". I have to believe Chabrol deliberately listed all the common conventions for this type of film and then said to himself: "In my film of this type, I'm going to violate every single one of these conventions, and I'm still going to end up with an entertaining film.". I think he succeeded. I give it only 4 stars because there are certain reasons why most films of this genre follow the conventions. I would have given it 5 stars if Chabrol had adhered to just 1 of those conventions in particular. Anyways, getting 4 stars after violating all the conventions is really equivalent to 5 stars. I think this one will have broader appeal than the other Chabrol films I've seen. It's a bright, sunny, colorful, energetic, fast-paced film - often even cheerful - with a Hitchcockian feel in some ways, but definitely not Hitchockian in most ways. I really like the way the time line is handled, too, which I think is the source of the title. It's one of the most original, creative films I've seen. I like it.

The Marcoux family -- husband, wife, daughter, son -- live at their vineyard in Provence. Henri Marcoux, 45, is weak, with a lovely young redheaded mistress who lives next door. Therese Marcoux is possessive, sly and goes to Mass quite often. She tells her husband she'll turn a blind eye to the mistress as long as there's no scandal and he throws out the lout who has become their daughter's boy friend. They are not a loving pair. "Listen to me, Henri," she tells him, "accept my offer or it's good-bye to the redhead. I swear on the heads of my children I'm not joking. Either Laszlo leaves tonight or you never see your redhead again!" "Who do you think you're talking to?" he screams at her. "I'm your wife, Henri!" "You're nothing to me," he says, with his face just inches from hers. "You make me want to vomit. You're hateful, ugly, stupid, uncultured, hypocritical, mean...old! So old!"

We shouldn't forget that their daughter is vapid. Their son is unpleasantly odd. He favors Mozart and Berlioz and conducts the music himself. He sometimes speculates about the maid and about his sister. The young maid enjoys leaning out her upstairs window in only her bra to tease the gardener and welcome her boy friend, who delivers the milk each morning. And Laszlo (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is usually around, loud and coarse. When he eats a soft-boiled egg he leaves more yolk on his face than there is on the plate. He's the kind of jocular, sardonic drunk you don't want to sit next to at a bar.

When a murder occurs, the only question is which one of the above will have been on the receiving end and which one did the deed. They're all reasonable suspects for either role...which, for me, is the problem with this movie. This was Claude Chabrol's third film and his first in color. He plops the characters down for us to observe, but often assumes that we're adult enough to figure out for ourselves such idle things as specific motivation. That all the characters lack either warmth or, in some cases, much intelligence, adds a layer of distance to this film. On the one hand, the set-up works nicely. For the first thirty minutes Chabrol gives us little vignettes of the family members and their relationships. These vignettes are so amusingly unpleasant I was hoping a solid, sly black comedy might emerge. But then the story started. There's little dynamic in a middle-aged, weak man going ga ga over, I mean falling in love with, a lovely, compliant and well-built red head. The aggressive unpleasantness that sums up Belmondo's character, which Chabrol ultimately uses as a device for truth telling, left me cold. Belmondo at 26 brings the energy this movie generally lacks, but Laszlo is a pain in the neck. (It doesn't help that, at certain angles, the young Belmondo resembles the young George Hamilton.) And perhaps it was because this was Chabrol's first color film, but he seems at times to have fallen in love with color as a way to underline romance. In the middle of the movie there is a long, romantic walk through the green-dappled woods by our lovers. They come across some poppies, sink to the ground and start some serious fumbling with their clothes. Then the camera slowly pans up to a vast field of orange poppies, then to a blue, blue sky...with the music soaring. This is Chabrol? The conclusion is arrived at only after a long narrative flashback that leads up to our witnessing the murder. Homicide shouldn't be bland, but this one was.

If you're fond of Chabrol, as I am, you'll want to see this as an example of Chabrol still learning to bicycle with the training wheels on. It's testimony to his talent and craftsmanship that they didn't stay on for long.

The movie was based on a novel by that great American short story writer, Stanley Ellin. He was one of the masters of the form, but because he wrote mystery short stories he never rated the sort of literary awe given to writers like the two Johns, Cheever and Updike. To find out just how good a short story writer Ellin was, buy a copy of The specialty of the house and other stories: The complete mystery tales, 1948-1978. You might grow weary of suburbanite angst, but I'm willing to bet you'll treasure Ellin.

Master filmmaker Claude Chabrol's "Double Tour" is not one of his best films. It's not on the same level as "Le Boucher", "Les Biches", "This Man Must Die" or "The Unfaithful Wife", but "Double Tour" is just too much fun to watch not to like.

The movie follows Chabrol's usual ingredients that make a successful film. We have the upper class family, the hidden family secrets, murder and lust, but the movie plays the material as if it were stylized melodrama. I wonder what Douglas Sirk would have done with the same material.

Henri (Jacques Dacqmine) is married to Therese (Madaleine Robinson) and has two children; Richard (Andre Jocelyn) and Elisabeth (Jeanne Valerie). But meanwhile he is having an affair with Leda (Antonella Lualdi), who lives right next door.

Now besides Henri's activities this family is going through a lot. Elisabeth is about to marry Laszlo (Jean-Paul Belmondo). Did you ever think you'd see Belmondo play a Hungarian? And son Richard, is a bit of a lose screw. He seems to lust after their maid, Julie (Bernadette Lafont) who likes to parade around in the underwear.

"Double Tour" was Chabrol's third film, coming after "Le Beau Serge" and "Les Cousins". It's not as good as "Serge" but clearly Chabrol was coming into his own with this film. He was finding a style that worked for him and themes that interested him. After watching this film, when you view his later films you will see the logical progression.

I compared the film to a melodrama and the performances are just as wild and overly dramatic. This is not a fault. It helps give the movie more color. No one really goes over the top, not even Belmondo, because no one is "normal" to compare them to.

Again, while this isn't Chabrol's best film, it's one of most most fun to watch. And something this fun should be seen by everyone.

Bottom-line: Not one of Claude Chabrol's best films, but one of the most fun and entertaining. The movie reminds me of a Douglas Sirk melodrama, but shows Chabrol's progression as a filmmaker.

Chabrol's first color film is a welter of oedipal conflict and emotional savagery, all of which is given a slightly Hitchcockian twist. Among the excellent cast, Belmondo is particularly memorable for his hilariously irreverent turn as a drunk, uncouth Hungarian hanger-on--and so too is Robinson as Marchaux's unattractively petty yet sympathetic wife. Jocelyn is also nicely cast as a creepy music lover who peeps through keyholes, among other habits. Adapted from a Stanley Ellin thriller, "Tour" is a poison dart aimed squarely at bourgeois convention.

Improbably fashioned or at the very least annoyingly dysfunctional characters who are impossible to care about, with the exception of the wife, who alone seems to react coherently to the situations encountered, and predictable denouement. Was hoping for a much better film, but Chabrol is hit and miss.