La Femme Infidele

La Femme infidele
(The Unfaithful Wife)
Claude Chabrol France, Italy 1969 98m 15 In French with English subtitlesA leading member of the French New Wave, who came to be regarded as the 'French Hitchcock', for many years Claude Chabrol's classic thrillers have been missing from UK screens. A mid-career masterpiece within Chabrol's remarkable run of bourgeois psychological thrillers, La Femme infidele traces the fallout following a husband's discovery of his wife's affair and his quiet, unnerving and devastating act of revenge.
Starring Stephane Audran (The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Babette's Feast) and Michel Bouquet (Renoir, The Last Mitterrand), the film has recently been remade as Minotaur by Russian auteur Andrey Zvyagintsev which won the Grand Prix at Cannes this year. In French with English subtitles.La Femme infidele is part of the Power, Corruption and Lies on Screen Season, a themed run of films exploring how power can be misused, how corruption develops, and how truth can be manipulated. Alongside classics like The Big Sleep and All the President's Men the season brings together three of Chabrol's most disturbing works, from La Femme infidele, 1970's impeccable Le Boucher and 1995's La Ceremonie (based on Ruth Rendell's novel A Judgement in Stone), these are thrillers which explore moral, rather than political, corruption and where polite society and dark secrets entwine to murderous effect.