Sam Panico A French surrealistic retelling of Alice in Wonderland with Sylvia Kristel in the lead? It's as if a message from space was sent directly to my brain, demanding that I stop whatever I was planning and sit inches from my TV and yelling out every translated word via closed captioning.Alice Caroll is leaving her husband, who she has grown to hate, driving through the countryside until her windshield cracks and she ends up at an old house. It seems she's been expected and is asked to stay overnight. The next morning, the servants are all gone and her car is fixed, but she can't find the way out.She tries to walk away from the house and still can't escape when a young man tells her to accept her fate. After staying a second night, she finally gets away in her car down the pathway before she crashes her car. As Jason Mantzoukas would say, "This is a Jacob's Ladder scenario."Claude Chabrol - the "French Hitchcock" - dedicated this film to Fritz Lang and it's a visual essay of Kristel navigating scenery, of the futility of existence, of trying to navigate life's path without any answers. It's gorgeous yet icy and mysterious, much like the visage of Chabrol's muse her, Kristel.I'd compare this to 1970's Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, as this is an absolute film, one that you experience on an emotional - and not rational - basis. It's my first exposure to Chabrol, but I know it will not be my last.

morrison-dylan-fan Recently watching her debut again in Pim de la Parra touching Erotic Drama Frank en Eva,I decided to take a look at co-star Sylvia Kristel's other credits. Making some offerings from film maker Claude Chabrol be part of my plan to watch 100 French films over 100 days,I was delighted to spot a credit from Kristel where she worked with Chabrol!,which led to me excitingly walking into Wonderland.The plot:Arguing with her husband, Alice Caroll leaves the house and drives down a stormy road.During the storm,Caroll's windscreen mysterious breaks,which leads to her taking shelter in a country house.Entering the house,Caroll gets a strange feeling that the owners of the house have been waiting for her.Waking up the next day,Caroll finds the car fixed and a breakfast on the table,but no soon of any humans,and the exit from the house completely removed.Rushing round the gardens to find an exit from the place,Alice soon finds her self entering a wonderland.View on the film:Floating on air, Sylvia Kristel gives an earthy performance as Alice Caroll.Scanning the grounds with limited dialogue, Kristel gives the title a whispering, dreamy atmosphere by holding Caroll's head high in the clouds,and also giving Caroll a determined streak to dig up the rabbit hole.Whilst skirting round a direct adaptation,the screenplay by writer/director Claude Chabrol does give some sweet surrealist nods to Lewis Carroll,from Alice's pill taking and meeting with a "childish" Mad Hatter,to the fantasy world being hit with a final jolt of reality.Taking a pause from his usual themes,Chabrol leaps around with an infectious energy in his surrealist Wonderland,which takes an episodic approach in Alice's off the wall encounters,which goes from all the birds singing to her,to Alice having to deal with a ban on questioning.Joining the tea party,Chabrol bounces the flight of fantasy with a sweet and sour psychological dip into an after life which opens the rabbit hole to the gates of hell,and reveals in a sharp final twist that Alice can never fully escape from the fantasy.Surrounded by the grounds of the house, Chabrol & cinematographer Jean Rabier sink Alice into a lush surrealist landscape.Covering the screen completely in green,Chabrol steams up a mythical atmosphere by stylishly using the miles of bright green plants and trees to keep Alice in a disorientating state,and also completely closing off Alice's wonderland from the outside world. Joined by a majestic score from Pierre Jansen, Chabrol takes delicious detours that flip from a tea party to funeral transformation,to a high wall stopping Alice from leaving Chabrol's wondrous Wonderland.

Antoine J. Bachmann Saw this by chance late one evening.Was attracted by the ambiance, which I found very Tarkovsky-esque, before I was attracted by Sylvia Kristel (she was not on screen during the first minutes I saw ;-)Was surprised to see her act. Really loved the pace and the suspense. Found the conclusion wonderful, though-provoking, unexpected.In my view this is clearly in the top 10 percent of Chabrol's production. I don't understand why this film is not well-known - maybe because it has an ex-erotic film actress in it?A very good surprise.

dbdumonteil Few people know this Chabrol movie and I agree with the precedent users:it's a work that deserves to be restored to favor.Almost unique in the director's canon ,it deals with the fantasy and horror genre:only the final sequences of "la rupture" (1970) verge on it.Its less-than-critically-acclaimed reception led Chabrol to ditch that new direction ,which was perhaps too bad,considering the big amount of mediocre films he made afterward.Probably influenced by American B movie "carnival of souls"(1962) and Louis Malle's "black moon" (1975),"Alice" walks a fine line that directly leads to works such as "Jacob's ladder" (1990) "a pure formality" (1994) and "the sixth sense " (1999).Sylvia "Emmanuelle -Krystel is not much of an actress,but it does not matter here because it's the atmosphere which counts:a green green landscape ,where Chabrol achieves the incredible feat of exuding anguish in the daylight,a gloomy mansion where,when you talk on the phone,your own voice echoes you;a strange library where the heroine finds a BOrges book-and it's no coincidence- Jorge Luis Borges's "ficciones"(one of his short stories is called "El jardin de Sanderos que se bifurcan":the garden with paths which fork),Borges whose spirit literally haunts the movie.The party where the guests celebrate "my sister's death" displays Luis Bunuel's influence ,notably " the phantom of liberty" (1974)A very strange supporting cast "plays" with the heroine ,and their behavior predates David Fincher's "the game" by more than twenty years:Charles Vanel and Fernand Ledoux ,whose careers began during the silent era,Jean Carmet,Andre Dussolier ,playing two parts ,dressed in white then in black and showing one more time Hitchcock's stranglehold on Chabrol's cinema when he says "the world is a pigpen,isn't it?" as Uncle Charlie in "shadow of a doubt"(1942).What will you find on the other side of the mirror? Sorry... of the wall?And when there's no wall anymore?"Alice ou la dernière fugue" should appeal to Chabrol's fans even if it's not really chabrolesque.