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La Demoiselle d'honneur ***/**** Image C+ Sound B- Extras A- starring Benoît Magimel, Laura Smet, Aurore Clément, Bernard Le Coq screenplay by Pierre Leccia and Claude Chabrol, based on the novel by Ruth Rendell directed by Claude Chabrol
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Comparisons of The Bridesmaid (La Demoiselle d'honneur) to Hitchcock are almost inevitable, not only because such assessments are the lazy default position of critics when referencing suspense yarns, but also because The Bridesmaid's director, Claude Chabrol, has carved out a career as the French heir apparent to the master's title. That said, the distinctions between the two filmmakers are probably more interesting than the similarities: Chabrol's overall style is considerably more relaxed than Hitchcock's, and his approach to character is finally less judgmental. Here, for instance, in lieu of assigning blame to the damaged femme fatale of the title, he notes the thrilling nature of her transgression and the unappetizing prospect of returning to normalcy after succumbing to her lethal charms. Chabrol has always put women in the driver's seat of perversity and sexual wilfulness–something Hitch never quite had either the guts or the sympathy to pull off.
We're confronted with this distinction in the film's earliest images. Handsome but schleppy Philippe Tardieu (Benoît Magimel of Haneke's The Piano Teacher) is aching to change the channel from a newscast reporting a bloody murder, but his sisters Sophie (Solène Bouton) and Patricia (Anna Mihalcea) mock him for his squeamishness and demand to keep watching. This establishes our man as a wannabe nice guy, one who's responsible in his salesman job and mindful of the feelings of his widowed mother, Christine (Aurore Clément). Enter Senta (Laura Smet), the titular bridesmaid who fills in at Sophie's wedding and sweeps Philippe off his feet. Unlike everything else in his well-ordered but boring life, she's unpredictable, impulsive, and passionate, though as time wears on, the lengths to which her amorality can go become a tad worrisome.
Everything's relative, of course–this is a movie where almost all of the male characters are shown to be weak or thoughtless. Senta is revealed to have a deadbeat dad, while Christine is granted a jerk boyfriend (Bernard Le Coq) who lies to her and makes off with a Tardieu family heirloom. Even Sophie's man Jacky (Eric Siegne) seems, like Philippe, a bit of a wus, setting the general assertiveness of the women in sharp relief. Senta proves to be a relative of the murderous duo of the late Chabrol masterpiece La Cérémonie: a societal outcast who can't help but gravitate towards the subversion of violence. We know she's crazy and violent, but given the male alternatives of dullness and contempt, what's a modern girl supposed to do?
Although it's based on a Ruth Rendell novel (as was La Cérémonie), The Bridesmaid doesn't take the outward form of a pulse-pounding thriller. It's almost thirty minutes in before Philippe and Senta meet; until then, the film prefers to record the rhythms of the Tardieu household as mother's disastrous relationship unfolds and Philippe burns with resentment to the point of swiping said heirloom (a bust of a woman named Flora) back from said jerk. He's clearly looking to break out of his routine, yet he doesn't exactly know it–and while we sense that something bad is going to happen, we're left to stew in the tension of unspoken desires and familial hostilities. Once the affair does commence, the imminent desperate acts are merely hinted at rather than telegraphed through streamlined narrative and jackhammer effects. Chabrol's Bazinian training serves him well: he establishes the rhythm of life as opposed to deploying shock tactics that tell us what to feel.
To be sure, The Bridesmaid is only good Chabrol; the crazy-woman-breaks-nebbish-out-of-rut story is a bit shop-worn regardless of the smart reading of the material. It's not the shattering tragedy of La Cérémonie or the cruelly sympathetic Le Boucher, and it merely hints at its thesis instead of putting it to the fore. Still, it's several cuts above the average thriller (French or American) and remains psychologically persuasive right up to the final close-in on that antique bust. The film is a harmonious blend of pop constructs with a genuinely artistic sensibility–and vivid enough to suggest the growing unease of someone too locked into his mindset to identify what he really wants. It's worth less than a masterpiece, but several times more than the average.
THE DVD First Run's DVD release of The Bridesmaid needs work. Though its colours are fairly lustrous for a film with such a muted palette, the 1.66:1, 16×9-enhanced (but, from the looks of things, non-progressive) transfer suffers from PAL-conversion artifacts like poor shadow detail. The Dolby 2.0 stereo sound is meanwhile a tad faint and slightly muffled, a matter alleviated by the subtitles, I suppose–too bad they're burned-in and therefore not optional. Extras begin with "Chabrol Directs The Bridesmaid" (11 mins.), which is remarkably interesting for such a brief piece, delving into first the septuagenarian's working methods, then the shooting of a scene that's pitted against the weather and thus a ticking clock. In short, a solid featurette. A text interview with Chabrol covers everything from his various artistic motives to his hatred for the traditional definition of family and ambivalence towards the "Hitchcockian" tag. (He notes wryly that it's better than being compared to Alan Smithee.) A director biography/filmography, a photo gallery, and a trailer for Chabrol's Merci pour le chocolat round things out.
110 minutes; R; 1.66:1 (16×9-enhanced); French DD 2.0 (Stereo); English (non-optional) subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; First Run
