Gathering up titles to watch for a "Auteurs in 2007" viewing week,I decided that despite having found The Girl Cut in Two (2007-also reviewed) to be a let-down,that I'd check to see if Claude Chabrol did anything else this year. Aware (but yet to view) of his earlier detours into TV,I was intrigued to spot a credit which would allow me to see small screen Chabrol.
View on the film:
Made as part of a short film/ anthology TV series, the limitations of just 30 mins to tell the tale, give directing auteur Claude Chabrol & cinematographer Roberto Venturi a zest for life, where the heaviness of Chabrol's Costume Drama epic Madame Bovery (1991-also reviewed) is replaced here with a playfulness of stylish up-close tracking shots on Mathilde walking the streets poor from losing all societies riches.
Serving up the Loisel's gourmet on a plate to the viewer, Chabrol deliciously cooks up his recurring themes and motifs which cover his credits, glittering in panning shots across a bourgeois ball with the facade of wealth,which closes in on a outstanding reflective close-up of Mathilde's face sinking into poverty.
While keeping their excellent adaptation of Guy de Maupassant's short story in costume, the screenplay by Gerard Jourd'hui and Jacques Santamaria buttons up Chabrol's themes with the original outstanding twist ending of the short story, which is built up in the Loisel's seeing themselves as "honest bourgeois" a lifestyle which causes Charles (played by a great, contemplating Thomas Chabrol) to give up all his ambitions so his wife Mathilde (a terrific, brittle Cecile de France) can bring her socialite dreams to reality, which fall off at a ball, which unknown to the Loise's is filled with false bourgeois.
View on the film:
Made as part of a short film/ anthology TV series, the limitations of just 30 mins to tell the tale, give directing auteur Claude Chabrol & cinematographer Roberto Venturi a zest for life, where the heaviness of Chabrol's Costume Drama epic Madame Bovery (1991-also reviewed) is replaced here with a playfulness of stylish up-close tracking shots on Mathilde walking the streets poor from losing all societies riches.
Serving up the Loisel's gourmet on a plate to the viewer, Chabrol deliciously cooks up his recurring themes and motifs which cover his credits, glittering in panning shots across a bourgeois ball with the facade of wealth,which closes in on a outstanding reflective close-up of Mathilde's face sinking into poverty.
While keeping their excellent adaptation of Guy de Maupassant's short story in costume, the screenplay by Gerard Jourd'hui and Jacques Santamaria buttons up Chabrol's themes with the original outstanding twist ending of the short story, which is built up in the Loisel's seeing themselves as "honest bourgeois" a lifestyle which causes Charles (played by a great, contemplating Thomas Chabrol) to give up all his ambitions so his wife Mathilde (a terrific, brittle Cecile de France) can bring her socialite dreams to reality, which fall off at a ball, which unknown to the Loise's is filled with false bourgeois.
