No he can’t explain. Not directly. Not in as many words.
But she knows. Knows what he’s up to.
He’s bumping off her blokes. If they get too much for him to bear.
Mind you, he shouldn’t be letting her flirt and dance with them, and be cuddling up with them on the sofa while he sits their playing with himself – at chess.
A most odd arrangement, or estrangement, this marriage, this family. Even their young daughter seems to be complicit in the oddness.
What’s he (Trintignant up to) Whats she (Isabelle Huppert) up to?
Contriving jealous possession as way of sharpening up attachment? A raising of the stakes of desirability to rather extreme levels?
It’s based on a book by Patricia Highsmith, so its bound to be tied up in perversity. A few dark corners are going to be backed into and some wriggly manoeuvres are going to be twisted around into some kind of knotted enravelment.
They should be getting rid of one another (divorcing), not these hapless blokes she keeps flaunting and taunting him with.
But it seems to have to go on. The complicity. The mucking about they call their relationship.
That lizard Trintignant is at his repellant best (or worst) Or is he more like slimy killer snail?.
And Isabelle Huppert. With boyishly short hair. Not quite doing it for me as a slippery seductress.
Dir: Michel Deville, France
5.5/10
Windows on the World 