fatal attraction
by
Douglas Messerli
Claude
Chabrol and Pierre Leccia (screenplay, based on the novel by Ruth Rendell),
Claude Chabrol (director) La Demoiselle
d'honneur (The Bridesmaid) /
2004, USA 2006
There is no doubt, clearly, that a late
work such as his 2004 The Bridesmaid,
is perhaps a bit less ghoulish than his 1970 masterwork Le Boucher, and he is obviously more forgiving of the inexperienced
mother’s boy, Philippe Tardieu (Benoît Magimel) than he might have been of some
of his former unintentional villains; but Tardieu is no less a dark victim than
the central figure, for example, of Adrian Lyne’s 1987 film, Fatal Attraction. Except Philippe is not
cheating on another woman, other than, perhaps, for his over-attentive mother,
Christine (Aurore Clément), who herself has just been jilted by a suave
liar—who might be perceived as another kind of “fatal attraction”—Gérard
Courtois (Bernard Le Coq).
As some film historians have stressed, it
is a seemingly well-adjusted family, behind whose smiles they keep dark secrets
that we gradually perceive, in Chabrol’s usual investigation into family
relationships, as a series of deep problems that never truly come to the
surface except at film’s end.
We suspect, for example, that although
Sophie may find temporary happiness with her seemingly simple-minded groom, she
will not be able to transform it into the happy marriage she seeks; Patricia,
as I have already mentioned, is a troubled adolescent, and near the end of the
film is arrested for a robbery to help her maintain her drug habit.
Philippe’s psychological downfall is far
more complex. What begins as a quick obsession of Sophie’s husband’s cousin,
Stéphanie “Senta” Bellange (Laura Smet), after the two meet, fall in
love, and consummate their relationship on the
very day of Sophie’s wedding, quickly becomes a passion that cannot be quelled.
Philippe, spending longer and longer periods in Senta’s inherited mansion,
where she lives in the basement with an impossible and comically realized
tango-crazed step-mother inhabiting the upper rooms, as he checks in with his
employer in brief cell-phone conversations. He no longer shows up for family
dinners, and can hardly be expected to
help with his younger sister’s increasing problems.
Senta, the name this clearly crazed woman
has given to herself, seems to perceive Philippe as the man of her dreams, the
one for who she has been waiting for all of her life. And to prove his love she
begins to demand outrageously absurd actions, which, at first, he simply shakes
off as a joke—particularly since so many of her stories about her career as an
actor (not “actress” designation for her!), which seems to constantly be
shifting, as she disappears for long periods to Paris, evidently auditioning
for further parts.
Senta, believing his act is real, plots
her own “murder,” reporting back that she has found Courtois, the man who has
disappeared from her lover’s mother’s life, and stabbed him to death while he
was out jogging.
If, at first he again doubts her
veracity, he is still determined to check the facts, visiting Courtois’ new
estate, to find the man well and alive, a dog barking outside his home (despite
the fact that his mother has long ago suggested Courtois does not like dogs).
It is a clue, of course, that most of the
audiences easily misses. As we discover from the police, after Patricia is
arrested, and during the same events Philippe is questioned about why he has visited Courtois the very day he has
found a guest’s body nearby, stabbed to death, Senta has indeed accomplished
her murder, only delivering death to the wrong man.
Despite all he now knows, Philippe still
returns to Senta’s basement hovel, reassuring her that he will never leave her
even as the police know on her basement windows, obviously having now traced
the murder to her through Philippe.
What also realized in Philippe’s gentle
strokes of her forehead is that she has become a kind of stone figure, the same
kind of figure that his mother (who is said to look like the stature) has given
Courtois early in the film, and which Philippe has later stolen back and hidden
away in his closet. Throughout Chabrol’s somewhat macabre film, the handsome
boy takes it out, stroking it, and even sleeping beside it. Now that Senta has
become that stone sculpture he is strangely at peace, offering her a protection
that he obviously cannot ever provide, an Orpheus to an Eurydice who has just
turned to look back.
Los Angeles, May
29, 2017