Video Review

L'Enfer (1995)

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Credits

Rated: Unrated; Genres: Drama, Foreign Language, Suspense; With: Emmanuelle Beart and Francois Cluzet

Video gives a new lease on life to L'Enfer, director Claude Chabrol's overlooked study of compulsive jealousy (from a creepy screenplay by Diabolique director Henri-Georges Clouzot) and his best film in years. Francois Cluzet (French Kiss) plays, with remarkable restraint, an overworked hotelier who becomes obsessed with the notion that his wife (Emmanuelle Beart, who combines innocence with teasing sensuality) is sleeping around. As his suspicions grow vile and cancerous, he descends into madness while his wife watches in amazement and horror. The film, shot in decaying, autumnal colors, is entirely gripping, because everyone can relate, in some small way, at least, to the knotted, nightmarish maze that jealousy creates in a war-torn mind.

Posted Jul 28, 1995

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