This autumn BFI celebrates Claude Chabrol’s cool, precise, entertaining and deliciously wicked thrillers with a BFI Southbank season, Claude Chabrol: Elements of Crime, running from 1 September–6 October, including the BFI Distribution rerelease of La Femme infidèle (1969) in the UK and Ireland on 11 September. The first of Chabrol’s great run of bourgeois psychological thrillers, La Femme infidèle is one of three of the director’s films that BFI Distribution has acquired: Le Boucher (1970) and Les Biches (1968) will also be available. A curated Chabrol BFI Player online collection will also be available for audiences UK-wide.
A number of films in the season are screening on 35mm. Often cited as the first French New Wave film, Chabrol’s first feature Le Beau Serge (1958) announced its director's preoccupation with the darker side of human nature. Shot on location in his mother’s hometown, the film uncovers violence and despair in the ordinary everydayness of provincial life. The Hatter’s Ghost (1982, pictured below), Chabrol’s underrated and often overlooked adaptation of Georges Simenon’s novel, stars French screen legends Michel Serrault and Charles Aznavour as two men playing a murderous game of cat and mouse.
The Cry of the Owl (1987) is a thrilling adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel, where the boundaries between victim and perpetrator blur when the object of a man’s voyeuristic gaze looks back. Chabrol is arguably at his most Hitchcockian here in this homage to Rear Window. The Bridesmaid (2004) stars Benoît Magimel as a shy, somewhat passive young man who meets a woman at his sister’s wedding, falling hopelessly into an all-consuming affair. La Rupture (1970) finds Chabrol working in a more overtly melodramatic mode—and all the more disturbing and unhinged for it—in a film about the institutions that fail women.
Other titles in the season include À double tour (1959), a lurid and transgressive adaptation of Stanley Ellin’s novel starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, which prefigures the look and feel of later Hitchcockian thrillers. The Third Lover (1962) is a precise study in voyeurism and manipulation that anticipates the claustrophobic domestic dramas that would define Chabrol’s greatest period to come. Les Biches (1968), a gender-swapping riff on The Talented Mr Ripley, is a polarising work, with a story that mines the seduction of privilege and marks the beginning of Chabrol’s creative and personal partnership with Stéphane Audran.
Hong Sang-soo's A Traveler's Needs—which screens today at the BFI London Film Festival—is the first of two films this year from the prolific Korean director, whose other 2024 effort By the Stream played at last month's Toronto IFF. Hong also made a brace of films in 2023—the first of his releases last year was In Water, a work which caused a few ripples on account of it mostly being shot out of focus (moreover, it was barely an hour long—although some viewers may have considered that to be a blessing). Those still traumatised by that blurry, hazy specatacle will be pleased to learn that A Traveler's Needs, in terms of its form, is much closer to orthodox filmmaking than it is to the (literally) opaque In Water.
A Traveler's Needs stars the incomparable Isabelle Huppert, who here reunites with Hong following their earlier collaborations In Another Country and Claire's Camera. The film finds Huppert back in East Asia just one year on from her turn in Élise Girard's Sidonie in Japan, and while Girard brought her outsider's eye to that film, which followed the title character on an overseas book tour, Hong is firmly on home soil—both literally and figuratively—with his second-latest picture. Hong's films are something of an acquired taste, with his low-budget tales of the quotidian as likely to bore as to enthral viewers, but he has a devoted fanbase and is a mainstay at several of the world's leading film festivals.
Huppert's Iris is a Korean-based Frenchwoman who gives language lessons to locals, and she seemingly has no teaching experience or qualifications. Her methods are unconventional, to say the least: a typical one-on-one session with Iris sees the student engaging in casual conversation (in English) with their teacher, before Iris homes in on a particular emotion the student has just experienced. Once these feelings have been verbalised, Iris then proceeds to scribble down a French translation—often with a degree of poetic licence—on an index card. The student is then instructed to repeat this phrase as often as they can, with the idea being that the recital of such a personal statement will help la langue française sink in.
The inscrutable Iris has no backstory, and thus seems to exist only in the present; she spends much of what she earns on bibimbap and makgeolli, and her great fondness for the latter becomes something of a leitmotif. Iris is at the same time present and absent, assured and uncertain, and her dichotomous nature provides no clue as to what her raison d'être might be—is she an agent of chaos, à la Huppert's Caterine in I ♥ Huckabees (who peddles "cruelty, manipulation and meaninglessness"), or up to something much more benign? What I do know is that I could have watched this enigmatic character all day long; it is only in the moments when Huppert is off screen that the brittleness of Hong's setup is exposed.
In the near 60 years since Jerzy Skolimowski's first feature Rysopis, the veteran director has had a rather spotty career, with his most interesting work appearing in the 1970s, when he turned out the likes of Deep End, The Shout and King, Queen, Knave. In 2015, Skolimowski directed the largely unmemorable 11 Minutes, which many at the time may have assumed to be the filmmaker's swansong; yet seven years later, Skolimowski—who turns 85 next month—returned with the remarkable EO, which arguably stands as his finest film. EO—whose title is an approximation of the sound made by a donkey—is a quasi-remake of Robert Bresson's 1966 classic Au hasard Balthazar, a work widely considered to be one of the greatest films of all time. Such was the universality of Bresson's outstanding film that Jean-Luc Godard famously declared it to be "the world in an hour and a
half"; with this in mind, a new take on Au hasard Balthazar sounds like a fool's errand—and it almost certainly would be were the film in the vein of Gus Van Sant's ill-fated stab at Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.
Fortunately, Skolimowski's film is a highly unorthodox remake, one that shares little with its nominal inspiration bar the central character; in these senses, it's cut from the same cloth as Werner Herzog's riotous riff on Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant. EO begins with the donkey of the title performing as part of a circus act in which he stars alongside the caring Kasandra (Sandra Drzymalska), who has built a deep bond with EO. It isn't long before animal rights protesters secure the release of EO, with the distraught Kasandra watching on helplessly as her beloved donkey is bundled off in a trailer. From this point on, EO embarks on an odyssey in which he experiences a wide spectrum of human behaviour, with his fraught, perilous journey across Europe recalling that of the main character in Václav Marhoul's The Painted Bird; as with Marhoul's film, EO is an episodic affair, one that sees its protagonist stumble from one situation to another, with every encounter beginning as an unknown quantity in which he must wait to see if he's in the presence of friend or foe. Skolimowski, like Marhoul, appears to take the worldview that cruelty is much easier to find than kindness.
Which is not to say that the film is all doom and gloom: Skolimowski punctuates this stressful ride with moments of real humour, and EO's inscrutable features are used to good effect in this regard. In EO, Skolimowski taps into the humble, immutable nature of donkeys—as Bresson did in Au hasard Balthazar—but he also infuses EO with a layer of mischief that sets him apart from the title character of Bresson's masterpiece, as does his general demeanour: more everyman, less Christ-like. Or is this simply what we project onto EO (or Balthazar, for that matter), who over the course of the film is played by six different donkeys? Smokilowski's film may centre on an animal, but it reveals a great deal about humans—be they on the screen or in the audience—and it is very surprising that this incredibly insightful work didn't win the Ecumenical Prize at Cannes (although it did leave the festival with a well-deserved Jury Prize).
As EO makes his way across the continent, the various environments he finds himself in are often as baffling to the viewer as they are to the endearing donkey. Whether watching a hotly contested football match or visiting the palatial home of a haughty countess (a late, gasp-inducing cameo from Isabelle Huppert), EO approaches matters with an indifference that stands in sharp contrast to the range of human emotions on display. While EO seems to be very accepting of life and all its hardships, Skolimowski inserts some dazzling sequences which suggest that EO is capable of dreaming—which might well be the case. If Charlotte Wells' equally heartbreaking Aftersun highlights the silent gap that separates children from their parents, EO prompts us to ponder the mysterious relationship between humans and animals; we think we know all about them, but how do they perceive us? This formally daring film makes for a moving, immersive experience, one that lingers in the mind long after the end credits have rolled.
In the 20 years since Christophe Honoré directed his first feature film (Seventeen Times Cécile Cassard), he's proved himself to be both prolific and remarkably consistent; perhaps the only real misfire in Honoré's filmography to date is 2004's My Mother, an unrelentingly grim Georges Bataille adaptation that could quite easily have derailed its director's then-incipient career. Yet, for all its faults, My Mother starred the incomparable and ever-watchable Isabelle Huppert, and since that film Honoré has proceeded to work with a clutch of other high-ranking members of French acting royalty, including Marie-France Pisier (Inside Paris), Catherine Deneuve (Beloved), Carole Bouquet (On a Magical Night) and, for his latest film, Juliette Binoche. Both Binoche and the superb Irène Jacob—a French icon Honoré is yet to work with—starred in Krzysztof Kieślowski's Three Colours trilogy, and in Winter Boy Binoche's on-screen son is played by Jacob's real-life son Paul Kircher.
In Winter Boy, Kircher's Lucas is edging his way through his final year of school and can't wait to leave his sleepy Alpine home town for the big city. Yet the sudden death of Lucas' father (Honoré himself) throws the family—rounded out by Binoche's Isabelle and eldest son Quentin (Vincent Lacoste)—into grief and disarray. As it happens, Lucas does make it to the city, and somewhat sooner than expected, as artist Quentin already lives there and agrees to put his brother up for a short while. Upon his arrival at Quentin's flat, Lucas becomes a source of irritation for his busy older brother and takes to wandering the streets; his time spent doing this serves a dual purpose, as it allows Lucas to explore the city while keeping out of Quentin's way. Lucas becomes acquainted with several of the people in his brother's life, and he forms a particular bond with Quentin's flatmate Lilio (the excellent Erwan Kepoa Falé), a sensitive would-be artist who serves as something of a surrogate brother to Lucas, who tends to clash with Quentin on the rare occasions that their paths cross.
While this metropolitan drama is playing out, there's an elephant in the room in the form of Isabelle, who has been left alone to deal with her newfound widowhood. Isabelle takes a back seat for much of the narrative, and mainly exists as a source of support for her two children—particularly Lucas—as they navigate the choppy waters of loss and grief. Yet when Honoré turns his gaze to Isabelle, the sense of bereavement is almost palpable, with Binoche delivering an immaculate turn as a woman who has ultimately failed to distract herself with the needs of others. It would be far too easy for Binoche to dominate the proceedings, especially opposite a newcomer like Kircher, but instead she calibrates her performance perfectly; Honoré, like the rest of us, is seemingly acutely aware of just how difficult it is to hide La Binoche in a film, and here he effectively harnesses his star's considerable skills.
Much will be made of Binoche and Kircher's fine performances, but it is also worth noting Vincent Lacoste's impressive work in Winter Boy; sandwiched between two more eye-catching turns, Lacoste invests his character with real depth, and his performance here underlines why he appears to be the current go-to actor for Christophe Honoré—even if he's only halfway towards notching up the number of Honoré-directed performances that both Chiara Mastroianni and Louis Garrel have on their respective CVs. As for Honoré's own filmography, Winter Boy may well stand as his most poignant work thus far; while many of his previous films—such as Love Songs, Sorry Angel and Beloved—contain more than a touch of pathos, Honoré's new film is directly informed by the death of his own father, and as such contains moments that are almost unbearably moving. This is top-tier Honoré, and one of 2022's cinematic highlights.
François Ozon is nothing if not prolific, and Peter von Kant, which screens today at the London Film Festival, marks his 21st feature film; an impressive tally, given that his first full-length effort, the singularly unpleasant Sitcom, was released a mere 24 years ago. Ozon's next feature but one after Sitcom, Water Drops on Burning Rocks, was an adaptation of a work by Rainer Werner Fassbinder—a filmmaker who cranked out films at a rate that makes even Ozon look like a slouch. For his latest feature, Ozon again looks to Fassbinder, whose 1972 film The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant is given a makeover in which the title character, as evidenced by the slight tweak to their name, is now male. Fassbinder's film was an all-female affair, and although Ozon doesn't go as far as to completely invert this setup, his take on the story primarily focuses on male characters.
It appears that much of the reasoning behind this bold decision is so that Petra can be conflated with Fassbinder, with the resulting Peter played by the superb Denis Ménochet. Ménochet has given many fine performances in recent years, including his turns in both Custodyand Ozon's outstanding By the Grace of God. He appears to be having a great deal of fun as the main character in Peter von Kant, who is a monstrous, cruel and self-centred filmmaker ostensibly intent on turning Amir (Khalil Gharbia) into a movie star—although it is quite clear that his interest in this young man is more personal than professional. A mainly silent witness to the drama that unfolds between Peter and Amir is present in the form of the director's factotum, Karl (Stefan Crepon), who observes the histrionics in a calm, detached manner while attending to the whims of his waspish boss.
Peter, Karl and Amir are counterbalanced by three female characters, all of whom are related to Peter: his cousin Sidonie (Isabelle Adjani), his daughter Gabrielle (Aminthe Audiard), and his mother Rosemarie (Hanna Schygulla). All three have an impact on the increasingly drink-addled filmmaker, who appears to have no line of demarcation between his work and home lives. That said, virtually the entire film sees Peter camped out in his apartment, which is perhaps to be expected when you consider that the film(s), like Water Drops on Burning Rocks, started out life as a Fassbinder stage play. But Ozon is too savvy a filmmaker to allow Peter von Kant to carry the air of a filmed theatrical performance; rather, in what might appear to be a counter-intuitive move, he leans into the artifice, in the process creating a compelling, claustrophobic work, one that replaces both the staginess and iciness of Fassbinder's film with the keen sense of mischief prevalent in many (but not all) of Ozon's previous works.
In a film which is about, inter alia, blurred boundaries, Ozon gets considerable mileage from the slippery relationship that exists between his film and Fassbinder's, even going so far as to cast one of the original film's stars—Fass regular Schygulla—in a supporting role. It is difficult to work out if Peter von Kant is a remake, companion piece, reboot, homage, or palimpsest, and in some ways its unusual connection to its source material puts it in the same sphere as both Luca Guadagnino's Suspiria—a film that also cast a Fassbinder favourite (Ingrid Caven) in a small part—and Jerzy Skolimowski's EO, the latter of which also plays at this year's LFF; in a move that parallels Peter von Kant's use of Adjani, Skolimowski's film also features a member of French acting royalty, Isabelle Huppert, in an extended cameo. Regardless of your level of familiarity with Rainer Werner Fassbinder and/or The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, there is a great deal to enjoy in the taut, spiky Peter von Kant, which runs to a crisp 85 minutes. François Ozon's ability to change style from one film to the next is really quite remarkable; fortunately, given his track record, we shouldn't have to wait too long to see what he does next.
Believe it or not, half a century has now passed since the release of Dutch director Paul Verhoeven's first feature film, Wat zien ik!? (aka Business is Business). In the years since, Verhoeven has shocked audiences both in Europe (Spetters, De vierde man) and across the pond (Robocop, Basic Instinct), all the while cementing a formidable reputation as an enfant terrible with major box-office clout. As time has gone on, Verhoeven has slowed down—perhaps understandably, given that he's now 83 years old—and significant gaps have appeared between his projects; the Dutch-language Zwartboek was his first film in six years, and a full decade would pass between its 2006 release and his return to cinemas with Elle. While his new film, Benedetta, has appeared a mere five years on from Elle, you do wonder when Verhoeven might decide to call it a day. It will be a pity when he does as, ever since the mid-1980s, the release of a new Paul Verhoeven film has always been something of an event, and neither his reduced output nor his return to Europe from Hollywood—it is now over 20 years since his last English-language effort, Hollow Man—has impacted on the anticipation that precedes a new Verhoeven movie.
Benedetta premiered in competition for the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival, and while it didn't win—Titane, which will be reviewed here shortly, scooped the main prize—the film nonetheless enjoyed a high-profile outing at the first post-COVID edition of the festival. As is almost always the case with Verhoeven's films, Benedetta is a work that sets out to ruffle more than a few feathers, yet it falls some way short of the transgressiveness of many of the director's prior films, including its immediate predecessor, the enjoyably trashy Elle. The success of the controversial, highly successful Elle owed much to the committed performance of Isabelle Huppert, who received an Oscar nomination for her electrifying turn; I fully expected Huppert to turn up in Benedetta, and I can only speculate that the role filled by the excellent Charlotte Rampling was originally penned with Huppert in mind. Given that Huppert played a similar part in Guillaume Nicloux's 2013 adaptation of Diderot's The Nun, perhaps it wouldn't have been the best idea for her to be cast here, if indeed she was offered the role; plus, it's always good to see Rampling at work.
Benedetta is adapted from Judith Brown's book Immodest Acts, and the title character is played one of Isabelle Huppert's Elle co-stars: the terrific Belgian actress Virginie Efira, who can consider herself very unlucky not to have been among the winners when Albert Dupontel's superb Bye Bye Morons netted a glut of César awards earlier this year. In Benedetta, Efira's nun has been in a convent since the age of eight, and during her time there she's claimed to have been on the business end of several miraculous happenings—such as visions of Jesus and the acquisition of stigmata. All of this is viewed with some scepticism by Rampling's stern abbess, whose demeanour grows yet more severe upon the arrival of a new charge in the form of Bartolomea (Efira's fellow Belgian Daphné Patakia), a rebellious type who wastes little time in entering into a romantic relationship with Benedetta. On Bartolomea's frantic introduction—she's trying to escape her abusive family—the abbess points out that the convent isn't a charity, and asks the desperate girl if she has money; this frank discussion brilliantly illustrates how quick God's earthly ambassadors can be to move the goalposts when the time comes to help those in need. 1-0 to Verhoeven.
With Benedetta, Paul Verhoeven has set out his stall somewhere between Jacques Rivette's stately La Religieuse and Ken Russell's scabrous The Devils, yet the end product serves up neither the emotional point of the former nor the biting critique of the latter; furthermore, Verhoeven's film doesn't give the viewer much of an opportunity to invest in its characters, despite the sterling efforts of both Efira and Rampling. And in spite of its best efforts to offend, Benedetta feels an oddly tame, muted affair—compared to 30 years ago, the bar has been raised considerably vis-à-vis what is considered to be outré, and Verhoeven is doing little more than treading water here as he rifles through the index cards of his past successes; in all honesty, it's quite disappointing to discover that this director's attempt at nunsploitation has resulted in one of the subgenre's milder entries. It all feels a bit reheated, and the casting of Lambert Wilson and Olivier Rabourdin only serves to recall their work in Of Gods and Men—a much more affecting tale of monastic life. Still, for all that, Benedetta generally works as lurid, pulpy fun, which is pretty much what we all want and expect from a Paul Verhoeven film. You won't change him now.
It's not too often that we see Isabelle Huppert starring in something as light and breezy as Souvenir, as the acclaimed actress is far more likely to turn up in much heavier fare such as the severe, austere works of Michael Haneke or Paul Verhoeven's feather-ruffling Elle. Souvenir carries more than an echo of Copacabana (another Belgian film starring Huppert), and, as with that film, it's nice to see the actress operating in a different gear. While Souvenir may be so slight it could just about blow away, Huppert's performance is typically magnetic and she glues the whole flimsy affair together; you strongly suspect that, without her presence, the film would be at the level of a forgettable TV movie.
Huppert's Liliane is a lonely factory worker who, several decades earlier and under the name Laura, nearly won the Eurovision European Song Contest (legal reasons?) but was pipped at the last by a Swedish act known as ABBA (who, it's alleged, cheated their way to the title). Following this near miss, Laura separated from her husband-manager Tony (Johan Leysen) and drifted into obscurity. Jean (Kévin Azaïs), a young temp at the factory, recognises her (his dad is a big fan, which highlights how many years have passed since the contest) and tries to convince her to come out of retirement just for one evening. Although Liliane would rather stay out of the limelight, she agrees to help out this rather sweet young man, but soon the two are in a relationship and Jean is Laura's new manager, with the goal being to relaunch her singing career.
While Jean doesn't lack enthusiasm, he has no real clue about showbiz and has only just recently ditched plans to become a professional boxer. While her youthful lover is able to secure several low-key (and very dispiriting) gigs, things hot up when Laura decides to again audition for the European Song Contest. As Jean has very limited knowledge and experience, Liliane turns to Tony for help with her preparations for the big event; unsurprisingly, she doesn't tell Jean about this, thus telegraphing the drama which will unfold as the film reaches its climax.
While Souvenir is all a bit too predictable, it again provides proof that Isabelle Huppert, arguably the world's greatest living actress, is capable of elevating the thinnest material into something worth watching. It makes for a fun hour and a half (wisely, Defurne resists the temptation to spin things out for any longer), and while the May-September romance on display is hardly a new screen concept, there are a few touching (and amusing) moments along the way. Souvenir made its way round most European countries in 2017, but a limited US theatrical release is planned for March; a region 2 DVD is available now.
