Customer Reviews

The Unfaithful Wife (La Femme infidèle) [VHS]

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

 

 

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.

'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.

The Unfaithful Wife is another film dealing with murder by the French New Wave's most mainstream talent, Claude Chabrol. What makes Chabrol different than his many contemporaries who also worked in the thriller genre is his approach towards his actor's emotions. Chabrol stays far away from exposing his characters inner thoughts, and allows more subtle actions and gestures to tell the story. The Unfaithful Wife is a prime example of how to deal with murder in the most minimalistic fashion. Chabrol isn't concerned wth visual exuberance, or artistic integrity like some of his New Wave counterparts, instead he's concerned with building characters that are meaningful to the viewer in different ways based on interpretations. Done in his most prolific period, The Unfaithful Wife is one of Chabrol's most emotionally detached, and deadpan films that works because the characters are not easy to define. The film also has a memorable ending that puts an original spin on an old plot.

Murder maestro Chabrol is one of the heralded French New Wave directors whose intelligent twists on genre (thrillers are his domain) ushered in an exciting new era in filmmaking. In "Wife," he offers a fresh take on the standard crime-of-passion tale, with the intense Bouquet playing a wealthy cuckold and Audran, Chabrol's own beautiful spouse, lending her ironic talents to the role of über-bored trophy wife. Chabrol's graceful camerawork, his sardonic attitude toward the nouveau riche, and a disquieting resolution will make you faithful to this "Wife." (Note: Divorce yourself from Adrian Lyne's wan 2002 remake.)

Another insightful tale from the talented Claude Chabrol. Audran is very good here.
What's it about? Well, the title gives you a pretty good idea. A married woman steps
out on her Hubby...and Hubby does his best to, ah, deal with it.

Won't insult your intelligence, like some films in this genre. Suspenseful.

This is a very good film about an episode in middle age, when a couple is static and bored, suffering a routine that is safe but unexciting. The husband is conventional, of the reticent type capable of suppressing terrible rage. The wife is a charismatic beauty, who will not be held back yet ready to maintain appearances. She finds a lover, a rich divorcee libertine who sits around most of the day waiting for her. Of course, the husband becomes suspicious and hires an investigator that results in a humiliating revelation. While you feel for the poor cuckold, you get a sense of foreboding for what he might do.

As the basis for Unfaithful, the film offers interesting contrasts. It is slower, without the wonderfully salacious sex, has strange bits of humor that doesn't fit with the story line, and the conclusion is completely different. In a way, the Chabrol film is a critique of the bourgeois Parisian milieu in the disdainful French tradition, which makes it fun and extremely depressing at the same time. That adds a level that isn't in the simple murder story of the other film. It creeps towards a violent climax and then a brutal conclusion, all handled with a great subtlety of characters. The tension is unbearable yet slow to build.

Recommended. This is a masterpiece of suspense.

Let's see. Your wife is none other than the blonde goddess Stephane Audran: sweet, loving, intelligent, outgoing, and the mother of your happy, well-adjusted, 10-year-old son -- there's even a scene where mommy and sonny are in the bathtub together (no kidding).

Naturally, in light of the blissful existence you enjoy thanks to your wife, you shower this wonderful, beautiful woman with all the affection and attentiveness a man could muster, including the physical kind, plus love letters and flowers every day. You go to sleep at night thanking the gods for this gift, ditto in the morning before going to work.

Right?

Chabrol sez: BZZZZZZT! Wrong movie. "I'm making one called 'The Neglectful, Boring, Stupid Husband,' but that's too long a title and not very marketable at that so I'll call it 'The Unfaithful Wife."

Okay, now what? The husband suspects something is amiss when he can't quite verify his wife's Paris comings and goings and hires a detective to find out if she is stepping out on him. Sure enough, the weasel comes back with the evidence that, yup, she's doing a writer dude three times a week, someone she met at the movies and hit it off with. The choice of writer is not an accident in the plot because, after all, those guys can talk, express feelings, make an effort to understand women, and so on, which is more than the office clod of a husband can do.

At this point, the husband, having gotten a wake-up call big time, goes home and decides to mend his ways before it's too late and his wife leaves him or makes his life a living hell. He starts writing love letters, send her flowers for no reason, takes lessons in lovemaking from an expert and applies those to his wife, throws her a big birthday party, takes her on a trip to somewhere fun and exciting, and so on. They all live happily ever after.

Right?

Chabrol sez: BZZZZZZT! Wrong movie again. He's into a different genre (noir), and moral lesson. I'm not gonna spoil it by telling you what chubby hubby does do, but let's just say that flowers are involved -- though most likely flowers his wife will put on his grave.

I gave four stars for the superb acting, spot-on direction, and very effective music -- and the privilege of watching Stephane Audran.

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.

I disagree with the other reviews. The rich, bored wife engages in an indifferent affair with an urbane lover and her suspicious, unemotional, possessive husband finds out. The best part of the movie was the background music.
Of course there can be understated performances but these are so wooden as to rival those of Pinoccohio.
Contrast this with the excellent performances by Richard Gere, Diane Lane and Olivier Martinez in the American version:"Unfaithful". (I concede that it is a miracle that an American version of a French film is superior!!! One has only to consider the vapid American versions of the wonderful movies of Francis Veber as proof.)
In "Unfaithful" Diane Lane gives a superb performance as a woman who regretfully endangers her happy marriage and yields to an obsessive affair with a man she to whom she is irresistibly attracted, much to her surprised delight, chagrin and despair. Gere gives a perfect performance as the unsuspecting husband and Martinez is convincing as the selfish, amoral lover.