...Et regardait Cain (Victor Hugo,La Légende des Siècles)(transl: The eye was in the grave and looking at Cain...)
The follow-up to "la Rupture" ,with the same actors (Bouquet and Audran),"Juste Avant la Nuit" is its exact contrary.In the light of the chilly -and with hindsight ,totally unfair-reviews "la Rupture" had received,Chabrol came back to the simple bald style of "la Femme Infidèle" ."La Rupture" had a lot of subplots,characters and action whereas "Juste Avant la Nuit" is not even a thriller:it's pure psychological drama;and there are only three characters: the husband (who sleeps with his best friend's wife),the wife and the friend.
Charles (Bouquet) accidentally killed his lover as they were playing S/M games.No one suspects him,not even the victim's friend who saw him once there in the room where they used to meet.Life could go on.Like Michel Duchaussoy in "Que la Bete Meure" (1969) ,he could get away with it.He isn't even a suspect.The Police investigate ,but they do not ask him any questions.
The main originality of "Juste Avant la Nuit" is that Charles is his own worst enemy.He is literally eaten with remorse ,he wants to be punished!After all,in his advertising agency,his accountant who has embezzled is arrested and will be tried.So why not him? Little by little,he confesses the whole thing to his wife who thinks that" it's only an accident" .Audran's character possesses ambiguity: in several respects ,she 's still some kind of child;we see her make chocolate cake and play with her children;we never see her have sex with her husband and they do not share the same bed (an element which was already present in "la Femme Infidèle" ) The scene where Bouquet describes his crime and his -obscure- motives is frighteningly intense ,Chabrol makes us attend the scene in lavish details without using any flashbacks (the prologue was also very restrained ).The looks and smiles which were a true sign language in "la Femme Infidele" have been replaced by low voices,almost whispering.(Half of the lines are whispered) When he tells the victim's husband the whole truth,the man seems impassible ,a Buddah's face."I could have done the same ,should Helene have been Laura" "I do not like revenge" .
"You want to be punished cause you want to suffer " his wife screams out of despair."You used to see that girl for the same reasons" .
Bouquet gives a tormented complex portrayal of a bourgeois -Bouquet says he is afraid of becoming a bourgeois,that's perhaps why Chabrol takes pity on him in the last sequences - who thinks that any crime must be punished :he is in direct contrast to his character in "la Rupture".
"Juste Avant la Nuit" belongs to that short period (4 or 5 years ) during which Chabrol was arguably the best director in France and was making the most brilliant films of his career.
All those works end in quietness and peace : on the sea("Que la bête meure",where Michel Duchaussoy sails away),in a luminous green landscape in "la Femme Infidèle" ,down by a river ("le Boucher" ) ,with a balloon release ("la Rupture") or here in front of the sea where children are playing. "They're beginning to forget" Grannie says ....
The follow-up to "la Rupture" ,with the same actors (Bouquet and Audran),"Juste Avant la Nuit" is its exact contrary.In the light of the chilly -and with hindsight ,totally unfair-reviews "la Rupture" had received,Chabrol came back to the simple bald style of "la Femme Infidèle" ."La Rupture" had a lot of subplots,characters and action whereas "Juste Avant la Nuit" is not even a thriller:it's pure psychological drama;and there are only three characters: the husband (who sleeps with his best friend's wife),the wife and the friend.
Charles (Bouquet) accidentally killed his lover as they were playing S/M games.No one suspects him,not even the victim's friend who saw him once there in the room where they used to meet.Life could go on.Like Michel Duchaussoy in "Que la Bete Meure" (1969) ,he could get away with it.He isn't even a suspect.The Police investigate ,but they do not ask him any questions.
The main originality of "Juste Avant la Nuit" is that Charles is his own worst enemy.He is literally eaten with remorse ,he wants to be punished!After all,in his advertising agency,his accountant who has embezzled is arrested and will be tried.So why not him? Little by little,he confesses the whole thing to his wife who thinks that" it's only an accident" .Audran's character possesses ambiguity: in several respects ,she 's still some kind of child;we see her make chocolate cake and play with her children;we never see her have sex with her husband and they do not share the same bed (an element which was already present in "la Femme Infidèle" ) The scene where Bouquet describes his crime and his -obscure- motives is frighteningly intense ,Chabrol makes us attend the scene in lavish details without using any flashbacks (the prologue was also very restrained ).The looks and smiles which were a true sign language in "la Femme Infidele" have been replaced by low voices,almost whispering.(Half of the lines are whispered) When he tells the victim's husband the whole truth,the man seems impassible ,a Buddah's face."I could have done the same ,should Helene have been Laura" "I do not like revenge" .
"You want to be punished cause you want to suffer " his wife screams out of despair."You used to see that girl for the same reasons" .
Bouquet gives a tormented complex portrayal of a bourgeois -Bouquet says he is afraid of becoming a bourgeois,that's perhaps why Chabrol takes pity on him in the last sequences - who thinks that any crime must be punished :he is in direct contrast to his character in "la Rupture".
"Juste Avant la Nuit" belongs to that short period (4 or 5 years ) during which Chabrol was arguably the best director in France and was making the most brilliant films of his career.
All those works end in quietness and peace : on the sea("Que la bête meure",where Michel Duchaussoy sails away),in a luminous green landscape in "la Femme Infidèle" ,down by a river ("le Boucher" ) ,with a balloon release ("la Rupture") or here in front of the sea where children are playing. "They're beginning to forget" Grannie says ....