jromanbaker I like Chabrol's early work but he is not the very great film director he is made out to be. Without Hitchcock and Clouzot this film would not have existed. He tones down and sometimes exceeds the pessimism of Clouzot while upping the sensationalism of the more sensational Hitchcock films. 'La Rupture' is the apotheosis of this excess.As a gay reviewer I cannot condone his vulgar and distasteful representation and exploitation of lesbianism, nor his stereotyped and exploitative representation of a person with learning difficulties and the linking of these two in a frankly disgusting scene of sexual abuse (yes, hetero males read and learn). Nor can I respond to the utter brutality towards the child at the beginning of the film, nor the husband being killed in such an atrocious way at the end. He had psychological problems that Chabrol did not have the maturity to explore.Audran performs to perfection as usual, unlike the rest of the cast. As for the mental state into which her character is placed at the end of the film, it compares with what Clouzot did at the end of his appalling film 'La Prisonniere'.There are also in my opinion too many characters, and it is far too long. Towards the so called climax, anything can happen. There is no inexorable logic and any sensationalist ending could 'work'.With the so-called lover of the Cassel character, Chabrol not only debases lesbians but women full stop!A hateful film, illuminated by Audran who seems as remote from it all as the balloons rising into the sky. I give the film four for her, but still worry about the high ratings given by other reviewers as it shows people actually relate to this debasement.

Martin Bradley LA RUPTURE is one of Claude Chabrol's most devastating critiques of the bourgeoisie and it's one of his finest films. It's about a working wife and mother fighting for custody of her small son after the boy's drug-addicted father has attacked them, only to find her husband's rich parents have hired a sleazy, corrupt investigator to destroy her reputation. The film isn't flawless; there are too many extraneous and eccentric characters but the main plot is beautifully handled, (it's based on a novel by Charlotte Armstrong), and Stephane Audran as the wife and Jean-Pierre Cassel as the investigator are both terrific. Of course, you may think Chabrol's decision to treat such a serious subject as domestic violence purely as a thriller a little tasteless but fundamentally this isn't really a film about domestic violence at all but an almost Dickensian study of evil; the bourgeoisie parents are distinctly rotten, the investigator even more so. If the film were more 'realistic' it might be unbearable; there's a scene of potential child sex abuse, and the child is mentally handicapped, that is almost too bizarre to be really disturbing and the film gets very bizarre towards the end. However, even with its convoluted plot it works superbly both as an outright thriller and as a scathing indictment of a highly amoral society.

MARIO GAUCI The alternative English-language title of this one, THE BREAK UP, always seemed to me to imply that Chabrol had made a typically classy treatment of the theme of a family going through divorce proceedings a full decade before that Oscar-laden triumph KRAMER VS. KRAMER (1979). However, the film's very opening sequence obliterates that misconception immediately and completely: the quiet breakfast being enjoyed by a mother (the ubiquitous Stephane Audran playing, as usual, a character named Helene) and her little son is suddenly shattered by the unkempt and sinister appearance of the father (Jean-Claude Drouot – perhaps best-known for playing Yul Brynner's long-haired right-hand man in THE LIGHT AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD the following year) who is clearly in some kind of daze brought on by the use of illegal substances.The couple start arguing and, just as the man seems about to slap the woman, he grabs the kid and literally throws him clear across the room; the latter hits his head violently against the edge of a kitchen cupboard and lands in a bloody puddle on the floor! It is a thoroughly shocking sequence – not just because it is totally unexpected and comes so early in the film but also since this utterly vile act is committed by a father upon his own son! Previously, I had equally gasped at a similar deed featuring in Ingmar Bergman's influential period piece THE VIRGIN SPRING (1960) but, again, the blood link between abuser and abused here makes the action all the more reprehensible.Actually, the film's original French title, LA RUPTURE, should from the outset have been more suggestive to what was in store for the perceptive viewer and, indeed, can be interpreted to allude to various characters and events: the dissolution of the couple's socially incompatible marriage; the gash in the kid's head (he is confined to a hospital bed for the duration of the film and is never again seen in a conscious state); the wrecking of the illusory brashness with which down-on-his-luck mole (Jean-Pierre Cassel, effectively cast against type) callously spins a web of deceit around Audran in a frame-up engineered by her all-powerful father-in-law (Michel Bouquet, also uncharacteristically portraying a villain) to ensure the custody of his grandson; and, at the film's conclusion, the cracking of Audran's very sanity – not only through the incredible events happening around her, but also because of her unwittingly imbibing a drug-spiked orange juice drink concocted by Cassel!! And what about the breach in Chabrol's own stylistic approach to such archetypal material, taking in as it does a healthy dose of black comedy (the eccentric inhabitants at the foreclosing boarding house where Audran and Cassel install themselves – including three elderly tarot-playing snoops, delusional thespian Mario David, boozing landlord Jean Carmet and his bespectacled, "backward" daughter Katia Romanoff), sleazy bedroom antics (courtesy of Cassel's perennially nude and horny girl played by the delectable Catherine Rouvel) and even outright psychedelia (Audran's kaleidoscopic vision of friendly balloon vendor Dominique Zardi)! Evidently, Chabrol wears his well-documented Fritz Lang influence on his sleeve even in this case! For the record, the film under review is based on a novel by Charlotte Armstrong, of whose works Chabrol would later also adapt MERCI POUR LE CHOCOLAT (2000).The first-rate ensemble cast also boasts a handful of other notable names: Michel Duchassoy (star of that which is arguably Chabrol's finest achievement, 1969's THIS MAN MUST DIE – appearing here as Audran's sympathetic lawyer), Angelo Infanti (as the doctor treating Audran's son and a lodger in her peculiar dwelling) and even Belgian director extraordinaire Harry Kumel (who, I am ashamed to say, I did not recognize…even though I know how he looks today from recent photographs and past DVD supplements!). As always with Chabrol during this major phase in his career, the impeccable accomplishments of cinematographer Jean Rabier and composer Pierre Jansen (who contributes a strikingly unsettling score) can never be underestimated.Incidentally, Audran and Cassel would later appear as an oversexed married couple in Luis Bunuel's THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE (1972) and, again, in Chabrol's star-studded THE TWIST (1976) which, ironically, is reputed to be his nadir(!) – and, of course, Audran and Bouquet also played husband and wife in Chabrol's THE UNFAITHFUL WIFE (1969; which, like THE BREACH itself, can be counted among Chabrol's Top 5 movies) and JUST BEFORE NIGHTFALL (1971); besides, probably as a result of this same Franco-Italo-Belgian co-production, Bouquet and Cassel would themselves be subsequently engaged to participate in Harry Kumel's own exhilarating magnum opus, MALPERTUIS (1971).

MartinHafer While watching this film, I found myself really hooked. I liked the plot about a woman who is divorcing her violent drug-addicted husband and his rich parents' evil plot to take their grandson. This was very compelling and fascinating--especially when, for the sake of their own egos, they are willing to fabricate a case against the poor mother in order to get "their property". And, the scumbag guy who insinuates himself in her life in order to create evidence she is an unfit mother is a wonderful plot device. Unfortunately, when the movie reached its climax, it very quickly ran out of steam and the realism went out the window. Now, instead of believable machinations, there was a completely inane segment about molesting a retarded woman and blaming the mother, slipping LSD into the lady's orange juice and a final showdown that comes completely out of no where between the violent (but repentant) husband and the sleazy guy trying to frame the lady. None of this made any logical sense and the only thing I liked about the final portion at all was how smart the heroine acted when she was called out on a wild goose chase--telling the cabbie "look at me and remember my face" so she could provide an alibi about where she was. If the movie were re-filmed and the final section re-done, it could have been magnificent. As is, it's a movie you might as well skip.