Customer Reviews

Flower of Evil

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

What saves this film--noticeably weaker than a number of other Chabrol efforts--is the acting. Veteran actress Natalie Baye is superb here, as is the actress playing her Aunt Line, Suzanne Flon. Also notable are Benoit Magimel and Melanie Doutey as the two young lovers.

While the actors all turn in solid performances, the plotting and story leave something to be desired. Chabrol specializes in the corruption of the well-to-do and how the lower classes conflict with those above them. This conflict can result in superb filmmaking (La Ceremonie, La Rupture, Les Biches). But this film is decidedly lopsided; with its essentially single focus--corruption and guilt--it lacks the dramatic punch and juice found in the other films cited here.

One can explore these themes (guilt and corruption) and certainly generate a powerful piece of drama. But Chabrol seems to be comfortable when they are inextricably tied to class conflict and when they are not, as is true here, he does not dig deep enough to make these themes as strong as they should have been to elicit real emotional intensity. What we have instead is cinema that slickly skates on the surface of these two related issues--corruption and guilt--without really plunging into the basis, the repercussions, the intricate complications they can generate.

Without revealing too much, a woman running for mayor focuses on getting out the vote, while her lecherous husband goes after young women--two in particular. Meanwhile, the husband's son--recently returned from America--and the wife's daughter (the husband and wife are each on a second marriage; hence the two younger people are half-siblings) fall hard for each other. Add to that a dark secret the woman's aunt has kept to herself for decades and there's the elements of the plot.

The climax is weak because the momentum generated is just not sufficient to result in any real emotional payoff. One of the above characters may receive his/her just desserts, but they don't count for much because there is essentially a humdrum development on display here.

Too bad. If Chabrol had added his signature element of class conflict he could have subverted the essentially superficial sheen of the film as it is with enough push and pull to make it really interesting. One can still admire it for the actors but not as a thrilling piece of dramatic cinema.

This is a pleasant film by Claude Chabrol, nothing like the forbidding title "La Fleur du Mal" would suggest. I say pleasant in that there is nothing gross or ugly about it or really shocking, and it ends in a way that most viewers would find agreeable. There is some dark suggestion of family evil and a kind of playful non-incest and some skeletons in the closet from the Nazi occupation and one dead man at the end, but otherwise this is almost a comedy.

It is not, however, in my opinion his best work, but is very representative. My favorite Chabrol film is Une affaire de femmes (1988) starring Isabelle Huppert and Francois Cluzet. I also liked La Cérémonie (1995) featuring Sandrine Bonnaire, Isabelle Huppert and Jacqueline Bisset. Both of these are much darker works than The Flower of Evil.

As in many Chabrol films this starts slowly but manages to be interesting thanks to some veracious color and characterization blended with a hint of the tension to come. And then, also characteristic of Chabrol, there is a interesting finish.

Nathalie Baye plays Anne Charpin-Vasseur, who in her fifties decides to run for mayor. Her philandering husband Gérard (Bernard Le Coq) is not pleased. Benoit Magimel plays the prodigal son Francois Vasseur, just home after four years in the US, while Melanie Doutey plays his non-biological sister Michele. Francois apparently ran away to the States to cool his growing attraction to Michele (to her disappointment). Now on his return their love blooms.

This is very much approved of by Aunt Line (played wonderfully well with spry energy by Suzanne Flon who was 85 years old when the film was made). Their affair reminds her of her youth, a mixed blessing since she lived through some horrors.

The main plot concerns the opposition that Anne is getting as she runs for mayor. A leaflet accusing the family of collaboration with the Nazis during WWII is distributed that threatens to derail her campaign.

See this for one of France's great ladies of both film and the theater, Suzanne Flon, who died last year after a career than spanned five decades.

Overall, The Flower of Evil was a very entertaining movie, but I couldn't have helped and become a little disappointed because of the fantastic trailer. The film was advertised as a very complicated, complex mystery, but it was actually quite simple. The story was a very good one, intriguing and exciting, but it seemed like the writer didn't have any ideas on how to flesh it out and add some mystery to it.

The Flower of Evil tells the tale of a French Bordeaux bourgeoisie family with a family tree like a Los Angeles freeway map and a history of evil doings which doesn't really have anything to do with anything. As this film rolls along with the day-to-day business of the mother running for local civic office while the step-sibs falling in love and granny putters around the garden, one can only wonder what, if anything, is being developed. When the end credits roll unexpectedly one can only wonder what Chabrol had in mind and why it was never really brought into clarity of fruition at the end. The wonderful story seems threadbare and almost nonexistant and the family history seems pointless.

I felt a bit cheated and let down when the film was over, but I wouldn't dismiss it because of that. I really enjoyed the superb acting by the top-notch cast, fine character development, and otherwise gripping story. Maybe some of the subtlety was just lost on me, but I liked the fact that you're never sure who's good or bad, and end up feeling for each character anyway. I am unfamiliar with any of Claude Chabrol's other works, but after seeing this film, I am definitely curious to check out some more. Not sure if I would recommend this, but personally, I thouroughly enjoyed it, as unsatisfying as it was.

LA FLEUR DU MAL is Claude Chabrol at his best: this is a bizarre, convoluted French mystery told with such finesse and aplomb that it feels more like sitting down to fine French cuisine rather than just viewing another foreign film. But that is exactly what Chabrol is about - respecting the intellect as well as the curious mind and eye.

Set in a small town in France a family is slowly revealed to have a mysterious past with interfamilial marrying, murder, strange accidents, and political intrigues. The mother Anne (Nathalie Baye) is running for town council, a career move which the father Gerard (Bernard Lecoq) finds objectionable. Gerard's son Francois (Benoit Magimel) returns from America at the point that his stepmother Anne is campaigning and reunites with his stepsister Michele (Melanie Donley) in a love affair he has tried to avoid, not wanting to carry on the family tradition of 'inter-marrying'. The one sane member of this family is Aunt Line (Suzanne Flon in an epic performance!) who has lived through it all and favors the current romance between Francois and Melanie for reasons that are made clear by story's end. While this tale may sound a bit mundane, in Chabrol's clever hands it slowly develops into a mystery that is so well conceived that it knocks us for a loop. All of the actors are outstanding, the musical score is subtle and right, the filming is impeccable, and the overall effect out-Hitchcock's Hitchcock. For intelligent film making at its finest LA FLEUR DU MAL is a must see. Highly recommended.

"The flower of evil" (= "La fleur du mal"), directed by Claude Chabrol, is centered on an upper middle-class family, the Charpin-Vasseurs. This family seems perfect but has dark and deep secrets, as seen from the very first scenes of this movie. What is wrong with the members of this family? Chabrol's mission is to make us care about the answer to this question...

The story begins with a crime, and continues many years later, when Francois Vasseur (Benoît Magimel), returns home after spending four years in the United States. Gérard (Bernard Le Coq), his father, is happy to see Francois again, but disturbed by the fact that his wife Anne Charpin-Vasseur (Nathalie Baye) is involved in politics and running for mayor. Francois doesn't have a very good relationship with Gérard, but is pleased to see his stepmother Anne, his aunt Line (Suzanne Flon) and specially his stepsister and first cousin Michèle (Melanie Doutey).

Truth to be told, Francois left France because he had strong feelings towards Michèle, feelings she reciprocated. Is he now ready to act on those feelings? And what impact will that relationship have on the dynamics of his family, already disturbed by Anne's incursion into politics and old scandals that surface again? "The flower of evil" answers these questions, and tackles subjects such as the cyclical nature of life, the importance of secrecy in some lives, guilt and the need to keep up appearances ("il faut faire belle figure").

All in all, I think that this film will interest those who are fond of whodunnits, but that can also appreciate complex psychological studies that make a movie more interesting. Of course, recommended.

Belen Alcat

La Fleur du Mal aka The Flower of Evil isn't quite Chabrol on auto-pilot, but he's clearly more interested in the usual bourgeois side issues than the identity of the author of an anonymous leaflet that threatens Natalie Baye's campaign to become mayor of a small town by raking over the coals of the family's history of murder and Nazi collaboration. History is obviously going to repeat itself, but there's no sense of impending dread, merely a feeling that Chabrol has left himself too little time to remember the plot and wrap it up. Thus we get a somewhat hurried finale that feels practically like an afterthought - you can almost imagine him looking at his watch and thinking "Is that the time? I'd better kill someone so we can all go home." It's at its best dealing with local politics and petty ambitions on the campaign trail, and Baye and Suzanne Flon have the best of the film, but Chabrol's reunion with La Ceremonie scripter Caroline Eliacheff seems far more a time-filler than an essential.

While there is not a lot of tension and suspense in this movie, it is a pleasure just to watch the acting. Every character is beautiful, even the aged Tante Line. One thing that I enjoyed was how the character of Tante Line was used. Not only was she integral to the story, but the director had the camera linger on her still-beautiful elderly face much more often than any American director would have. It made me long for my grandmother, and wish she had been such an important and constant part of my life.

Whatever the intentions of the director, I came away liking all but one of the main characters. It seemed we were being set up to dislike most of them, but the director then fooled us by showing them as sympathetic humans.

really good suspenseful movie that is more exciting than most american mystery movies, except for the a few hitchcock movies. i really enjoyed this one and it's one of a few foreign movies i like.

Over the years, specially in his last stage, Claude Chabrol focused by revaling the existentail boredom in the upper class. We may cite L'enfer or Chocolat for instance, in hich the psychological tension was the main ingredient but never at the level of Que la bete meure or The butcher in the early seventies.

And if I had to cite the first film in which Claude is concerned with the inner demons, this would be "Innocent with dirty hands" from 1975. Once more Chabrol mirrors the unsaid family secrets that hide major sins. The members of his disfunctional family turn around the imminent election of Nathalie Baye and the unpleasant factors that surround this familar drama, where the mistery, the irony and the lack of ethic permeate their way of living.

Slow paced movie whose staging might perfectly fit with a teatrical production. Specially recommended for Chabrol's buffs.

The Flower of Evil (Claude Chabrol, 2003)

Slow drama (listed as a drama/thriller at IMDB, but the "thriller" portion never emerges) about three generations of a politically-active French family and their dalliances in love, politics, and the occasional murder (in the past, anyway). Every review of it I've read since watching the film has mentioned that this isn't Chabrol's best work. Good, because it's my first exposure to him, and I can't see what all the fuss is about at all. Some very good acting, as befits a top-notch cast (Nathalie Baye, Benoit Magimel, Jerome Bertin, Bernard le Coq, Melanie Doutey, etc.), but the Chabrol/Eliacheff script doesn't give the acting much to hang on, especially when a number of these characters are stock (how many overly-ambitious politicians does the film world need?). Some potential here, and some of the points Chabrol raises are interesting from an academic standpoint, but I never found myself connecting with any of the characters save Bertin's, and he was only around toward the end of the movie for comic relief. I'll head back into Chabrol's catalogue and see some of the films he's been much more praised for; hopefully they're better. **