powermandan Le Boucher is one of Claude Chabrol's most underrated films since it seemed to get away from the recent string of French New Wave films of the 60s. When I first saw this, it caught me out of nowhere and was a little too much for me to take in at one viewing. A lot of films do that to me. Luckily this one demands to be seen again, even after you know what happens. This is a character study as well as an excellent example of films' possibilities. Le Boucher (French for The Butcher) is a romance, drama, horror, and thriller, all rolled into one. The majority of the time, movies that handle all these different genres don't have a clear-cut way of executing them. This has a way of handling it all that is just right and so original. Le Boucher takes place in a small town in France that resembles a time before. The town has stayed historic. We meet our two main characters at a wedding ceremony. Well-loved school teacher and headmistress Hélène, and war veteran and career butcher Popaul (Paul) are the characters in an-almost two-character film. They really hit it off and Paul falls for her. But she got out of a bad relationship ten years earlier that took such a toll on her that she is still not ready for a relationship. On his birthday, she gives him a lighter: a motif. So far, the film is a light-hearted romance. We hear about some of the horrors that Paul witnessed in war and we hope that they get together. Both would benefit from each other. When Hélène tells him that she wants everything to be platonic, we wish for her to change her mind. Then the film switches directions...Early on, cops say that a woman has been murdered. She wasn't raped which makes it a little bizarre. That's about as far as it goes when they talk about it. It's brief, but we all know it will be revisited in some form or another. Oddly, we are not too concerned with a recent murder, just with our main characters. Hélène takes her class on a field trip to a cave area on a mountain in a scene set up perfectly. This is when the film switches gears. It looks like the roof will cave in on the students, or that they will fall off the edge at any second. But a tiny bit of blood drips on a student, the camera then shows a bloody hand on the edge of a higher part of the cliff. She goes to check it out, but the corpse is very briefly shown and the audience is still freaked out. The victim was the bride at the beginning of the film. She finds Paul's lighter, so we know that it's him. He still tries to get with her, but there is tension: she is scared that he may kill and he is scared that he may be prone to kill. The final act is a horror-thriller, but mainly the latter. He finds out that she knows that he's the culprit in the series of murders and he finds a need to explain. She lives in an apartment just above the school where she teaches and she tries to flee him off while he worms his way through the school to her. This is when the audience finds out Paul's motives that really gets them to think. Paul is a butcher, he saw grizzly death in war and obviously killed some soldiers too. He has been around death for so long. It is also obvious that he has some PTSD, but he also loves Hélène. His murders to women were his own bizarre way of expressing himself. Is it a stupid way? Of course, but Paul feels the need to assert his masculinity through physicality and he is near death all the time and has PTSD. So his motive is entirely believable and our heart goes out. We wonder if he will kill Hélène or himself. He stabs himself, and a scared Hélène is frightened about what Paul may do next, but is also turned on and impressed by Paul going through such savage acts just for her. In a way, she provoked him. So is she the real villain?Although this is not much of a French New Wave film, it does have enough elements to be identified as one. The use of natural lighting and on-location is perfect. And one of the perfect aspects is the music. It is at the same level as Jaws and Halloween. And, of course, the actors are stellar. They make a character study out of a wildly meshed-together genre film. Not only was the film very well-done, it has a lasting impact on the characters. Who these characters are, and what their statuses are in terms of humanity are some things that make you think long after the movie ends.The movie is so bizarre, so original, and so great!

Magma_Flow Chabrol in his previous two films with Audran ("Les biches" and "La femme infidèle") shows a perfect touch in presenting actions whose motivations are unexplained or underexplained yet emotionally plausible. Here, in "Le boucher," he miscalculates and does the opposite: Hélène's motivation is obvious and implausible.Hélène is intelligent, happy, and successful in a career she loves, and she has sworn off romance after a bad experience. Yet we're supposed to believe she's drawn to a man whose every remark shows him to be embittered, morose, and uneducated. And the attraction is such that after only a few casual meetings with him, she hides evidence that he's a deranged killer.Her action is a touchstone of the thriller genre: a protagonist covering up a lover's crime. When this moment is handled properly, the audience's shock at the perversion of justice is balanced by sympathy for the protagonist's devotion. But since there is no basis for Hélène's devotion, we respond only with disgust, which destroys our sympathy for her -- a fatal flaw for any film. Our disgust increases after the third murder, which she's partly responsible for. The film grows ever more repellent as it fails to acknowledge how compromised its heroine is.Finally comes the ride to the hospital, where Paul makes a speech. Here is Chabrol's chance to salvage the situation by revealing some poetic truth behind it. Instead, Paul only declares that he worships Hélène. He adds a creepy, stalker-like confession of how he stood in the street many nights staring at her window. These are platitudes that beautiful women hear all too often. Yet for Chabrol they justify Hélène's radiant expression at the hospital, her first kiss of Paul, and her vigil by the water after his death. Becoming the object of a homicidal sadist's obsession -- something that real women dread -- supposedly transforms and redeems Hélène.Chabrol apparently had in mind a schematic notion about embracing the bestial foundation of society as it breaks through the bourgeois surface, but he failed to develop the schema into a credible story.

jandesimpson Way back in the mid '80's we took a family holiday in the Dordogne where we devoted one day to a rather special pilgrimage. With the aid of a map the village of Tremolat was not difficult to find. Tremolat - the name evokes that most magical of village locations for probably our favourite and certainly most oft watched French film. On arrival what surprised us was an absence of tourists and coaches. Surely this would be like Oxford as it is now with its "Morse" tours; but with people discovering the location of the butcher's shop, the school with Madamoiselle Helene's little flat above, the church, the cemetery, the caves. But fifteen years after Chabrol made his most unforgettable film there, no one had got round to organising a "Boucher" tour. It was a case of making one ourselves. We were excited and in no way disappointed. Everything was there and we were even able to retrace the exact walk that Popaul and Helene had taken in that memorable tracking shot from the wedding party to the school in the village square. The location of the butcher's shop, although a domestic dwelling was clearly identifiable as was the school which was in fact the Mairie. As the latter was a public building we were able to enter and even mount those very same stairs only stopping when we reached the door. Beyond, an office perhaps, so we didn't break the spell by trying to enter.Claude Chabrol died last year so this reminiscence is by way of being a belated tribute to the French director who, with the possible exception of Francois Truffaut, has given me the most pleasure over the years. I have caught up with much of his late oeuvre only in the past few months and have to confess to being often disappointed. He made far too many so there are quite a few potboilers. But way back in the crossover period between the late'60's and early '70's he made those three extraordinary psychological thrillers that are among the glories of French cinema - "La Femme Infidele", "Que La Bete Meure" and finest of all "Le Boucher". The sound of Popaul's soft cries of "Madamoiselle Helene" coming out of the darkness and the image of Helene standing alone by the river and silently staring ahead are unforgettable moments among so many. Thank you, Claude Chabrol, for the lasting pleasure of your three greatest films and for "Le Boucher" in particular.

PizzicatoFishCrouch Amongst the guests at a wedding are a Helene, a lonely teacher, played by Stephane Audran, and an ex-army butcher (Jean Yanne). Against their differences, the two develop a friendship. However, in the town there lurks a serial killer, and that killer may or may not be the butcher himself. Plagued with feelings of doubt and fear, Helene finds herself constantly at tenterhooks regarding her new friend (of sorts), and surprises and shocks are placed intricately until the very last frames.At 90 minutes, this mystery feels longer than it is, and that may be due to some of the stylistic techniques adapted by director Chabrol, such as the languid and very sparse use of camera movement, and shots of the bells to contribute to a sense of time. Content-wise, he borrows from Hitchcock, using themes of shared secrets, obsession and moral ambiguity. These themes are used well, creating appropriate amounts of suspense and anticipation in the viewer, and Chabrol plays with his audience deftly, placing surprises and non-surprises in sequence so that we are every bit as nervy as Audran. He is less concerned with explaining the motives for the killings than just presenting them, and for that, and chilling atmosphere of indifference is created throughout the film.The two leads are strong in their performances, and the slow, fragile romance between them is as credible as it is integral to the plot. In particular, Stephane Audran shines, as a woman who begins, poised, content and assured, only to finish ruffled and perhaps, as the ending shot shows, a little ruined by the events that she has witnessed. The film is carried along by an eerie, quasi-apocalyptic score by Pierre Janse and Domonique Zardi, which haunts long after the film has ended.If the ending does feel like somewhat of a copout, that may because we as the audience have viewed one plot twist too many, and the frequency and slightness at which each twist is revealed diminishes its impact somewhat. But for the most part, this is good film-making; quite unpretentious, coolly aloof, and the subtle delivery only works to its advantage.B+