filmalamosa A young man (Benoît Magimel) attracts a fatal attraction (Laura Smet) at his sister's wedding. Smet plays a psychotic girl who Magimel thinks is only living in a semi fantasy world. But unfortunately it is more than that.I don't care for horror/psychopathic killer genres but if you do Claude Chabrol delivers again.Smet does a perfect job of portraying a mentally ill female--and the story leaves you in doubt so you have to watch it all the way through to see what happens. Also Benoît is handsome, after recent doses of Depardieu and Yves Montand--this is a relief.Good adult entertainment. Both the main characters are strong actors. Also as another reviewer stated Smet is uniquely beautiful as well as a good actress....as stated previously ditto Magimel. Short dark horror story.Recommend if you like the genre.

kenjha At his sister's wedding, a young man falls for a bridesmaid who harbors some weird ideas and may have a disturbing past. Chabrol is regarded as the French Hitchcock, and this film has some parallels with "Strangers on a Train," but it's not as taut and suspenseful as that classic. Chabrol here seems to be more interested in character development and relationships than in the plot. In fact, between a slow beginning and an unsatisfying ending, what little plot there is is rather predictable. However, it manages to be engaging despite these shortcomings. The pacing is leisurely but not boring. It has a good cast.

Gunter Sharp It's not clear to me why the vast majority of the users of this web site give this film such a high rating. There wasn't much I could find of substance: The plot is somewhat thin, and not developed as it could have been. Senta presents four conditions for totally committed love, including two that would be rejected by most people. However, the protagonist only deals with one of these. It would have been far more interesting if he had dealt with both. At least there would be some progression of the plot, which eventually could reach its conclusion or unravel (I'm avoiding spoilers here). The character of Senta is not believable, in the sense of being an irresistible force. Her speech is too clipped and with little intonation. Perhaps this is the way of modern French speech. Further, there is little in the way of body language or eye movement to reflect the irresistible force. Or perhaps the protagonist is simply too messed up and seeks solace in whichever live female (not statue) that crosses his path.

julioecolon I have not read Ruth Rendell's novel, so I cannot judge this film as an adaption of a fictional work. On the other hand, I think the film fails primarily because Rendell's story doesn't work well in a French setting. If I'm reading the film correctly, I think that Rendell wanted to get at class distinctions as a central topos of the novel, and this theme would play out superbly in an English setting, where class differences are part and parcel of the social fabric. In Chabrol's film, such distinctions are so understated as to be lackluster, if not plain dull, a thematic failure that is only made the worse by characters who are lifeless and lacking in the telling character traits and hard-scrabble wisdom one expects of certain class types. Everyone in Chabrol's film is bourgeois, bourgeois, bourgeois, and therefore just plain boring. The acting is not so great and I felt that the casting decisions were flawed. Finally, Senta is a ridiculously deranged young woman (wouldn't you, too, hear the stylus skipping across the LP if someone said they loved you and that you were the person for whom they had been waiting forever, after one afternoon of sex?), so it's difficult to imagine anyone taking her very seriously. Let's not forget the absurdity of Senta's mother and the mother's lover, played by untrained dancers (it's very obvious) who spend their waking hours practicing the tango in awkward and clumsy moves. Why didn't Chabrol do something else with them other than film the pair practicing steps they can never hope to master? I would not recommend this film.