(The Cry of the Owl)
Country: FR/IT
Technical: col 102m
Director: Claude Chabrol
Cast: Christophe Malavoy, Mathilda May, Jean-Pierre Kalfon, Virginie Thévenet
Synopsis:
A depressive spies on a beautiful woman at her remote house because he is drawn to her contented existence. But when he approaches her he sets in train a series of fatal developments.
Review:
Clearly not one of Patricia Highsmith's best, and whatever Chabrol and his regular collaborator Odile Barski changed did not improve it any. We have a character of morbid disposition chancing to cross paths with a girl who has dreams of Death coming for her; and an ex-wife in cahoots with the jilted boyfriend from her business in Paris nearly 200 miles away. In short, nothing makes any kind of sense, but Chabrol gets to film in one of his bourgeois country homes, set up some complicated camera movements, and end with a double knife murder before our eyes which equally defies explanation. One of the more mediocre films from the autumn of his career, recycling old ideas and situations via the blandest of performances.
(The Cry of the Owl)
Country: FR/IT
Technical: col 102m
Director: Claude Chabrol
Cast: Christophe Malavoy, Mathilda May, Jean-Pierre Kalfon, Virginie Thévenet
Synopsis:
A depressive spies on a beautiful woman at her remote house because he is drawn to her contented existence. But when he approaches her he sets in train a series of fatal developments.
Review:
Clearly not one of Patricia Highsmith's best, and whatever Chabrol and his regular collaborator Odile Barski changed did not improve it any. We have a character of morbid disposition chancing to cross paths with a girl who has dreams of Death coming for her; and an ex-wife in cahoots with the jilted boyfriend from her business in Paris nearly 200 miles away. In short, nothing makes any kind of sense, but Chabrol gets to film in one of his bourgeois country homes, set up some complicated camera movements, and end with a double knife murder before our eyes which equally defies explanation. One of the more mediocre films from the autumn of his career, recycling old ideas and situations via the blandest of performances.
