L'Enfer (1994)"I have my rights, and I will use them now,” says a husband quivering with the fever of madness to his cowering wife.
Mixing subtle fantasy with realism, Chabrol has essentially remade Kubrick's "The Shining" although the interest is singularly focussed on exploring themes of obsession and insanity than the supernatural element. That's one Kubrick parallel, "L'Enfer" also draws easy comparisons to his later "Eyes Wide Shut" which meditated on infidelity, how a husband's paranoia and delusions can send him reeling into hell, true or imagined. The film is equal parts of both Kubrick films – a paranoia thriller and familial drama – like Nicholson's hotelier Francois Cluzet's Paul manages a small hotel which faces stiff competition for "pounces who muscle in," and he slowly reveals himself to be a man who's under the stress of married life, a middle aged guy who was never ready for it. Especially children. Interestingly, although Paul has affection for this young son he is never shown to really care about his well-being; this is established beautifully through his interactions with his son and the mother, and through the exclusive attention he pays to his wife Emmanuelle Beart's Nelly (he may even be jealous of his own kid). Nelly is a free-spirited woman who's still a child and easily comforted by Paul (in one scene she even tells him, albeit wryly, that the only reason she married him was for money).
Cluzet is brilliant, he goes from a stressed-out businessman to a lampooning fool by the end of the film deftly mixing menace and psychosis. Chabrol tilts the camera and fades out light to hint at moments of surrealism, things Paul imagines...but this subtle technique culminates into the film's dramatic ending where it’s much difficult to distinguish between what's real and unreal. Despite the dark nature of the story, the foreboding and the hints of the sinister, the film is not without humour - when Paul barges into the rooms of one of his tenants accusing an amateur filmmaker of sleeping with his wife, the tenant defends himself with a mouth full of toothpaste and a toothbrush in hand! Chabrol uses dramatic frames of black to show passage of time, I found this visual technique very effective and in service to the film's aggressive editing, its use of time and space. Roeg's "Bad Timing" is about the same thing and both films feature a pivotal scene of sexual abuse. A return to form for Chabrol. ak
Rating: 
1/2 out of
