1 out of 5

Director: Claude Chabrol

So I’m sure the Claude Chabrol was a notable name at some point, lumped into the French New Wave with those crazy cats Goddard and Truffaut, but you’d never guess it with this stale film. There’s a hot chick, right? And she’s all crazy and confused like young hot chicks are. And she falls in love with an older man! Who uses her! And she rejects the advances of a crazy rich kid her age! Oh man whatsa girl ta do? A glib description you say? Well, it matches the depth on display here. Plots are plots, and they certainly don’t have to be twisty-turny to catch our interest. A love triangle is good. But character depth, generally, is a requirement for good films (character based films, anyway), and so when no one develops beyond our first glimpse of their sexy smile, or tired glance, or crazy smirk, we’re going to have to fall back onto other aspects of the film. None of which, here, stack up. I understand this was very late in Chabrol’s career, and a few years from his death. But the film is ridiculously out of touch, and the splashes of horribly cued music and pointless camera pans and awful, awful transitions cannot be brushed aside in favor of some redeeming quality because there’s nothing here. This is an old man’s attempt at painting a ‘subversive’ picture and showing that he hasn’t looked up subversive in quite some time. Boring, pointless, and 2-dimensional.