Review of Nightcap

Nightcap (2000)
4/10
Chaff rather than grain---Chabrol should retire
3 June 2012
Warning: Spoilers
Jeanne (Anna Mouglalis)discovers she may have been swapped accidentally at birth---although everyone denies it and downplays it. Her father if the swap occurred would have been Andre Polanski (Jacques DeTrone) both of them are pianists so it seems to fit--but no one is taking it too seriously except Polanski's wife Mika (Isabelle Huppert). She is not amused.

We find out as the story unfolds that she drugged Polanski's first wife causing a car wreck in which she died. This dead woman would have been Jeanne's mother if a swap occurred and they look just alike--same receding chin etc...

Enough of the story. As another reviewer noted this is a yuppiefied upper middle class tour de force with fake piano playing and everyone is a Doctor or in the Arts (or rich).

My problems with this movie: It is goes nowhere; Jeanne knows Mika drugs and possibly poisons rivals 15 minutes into the movie but in the next hour and half of movie time she eats and drinks everything and agrees to stay at their house for 2 days and drive a car after drinking spiked coffee. Nothing happens!

The denouement is meaningless... I liked the reviewer who said Detrone is like a zombie---how true--I even thought a zombie who looks a little campy with plucked eyebrows. In the denouement nothing happens...Detrone the Zombie confronts Huppert about the drugging and death of his first wife in a deadpan non-emotional manner and then sort of shrugs and goes to playing the piano after also learning his son and Jeanne have been in an accident that very night. Huppert starts crying and then the movie credits start rolling and it ends.

Like the reviewer who said Claude Chabrol produces so many films that most of them are chaff.... how true of this one. Chabrol needs to retire. Almost all creative people: authors artists musicians directors etc... peak with a half dozen or so really good works and then burn out. At best endlessly repeating themselves...at worst producing really bad stuff.

3 or 4 stars out of 10...There are so many better films of this genre-- try The Double Hour.
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