BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Candida It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

morrison-dylan-fan After watching the stylish 1959 movie À double tour,I started talking to a fellow IMDber about the work of auteur film maker Claude Chabrol. Receiving a rec for another Chabrol title,I tracked down the DVD on Ebay,and get ready to have a butchers at Chabrol.The plot:Attending a wedding,school teacher Hélène meets Paul Thomas,who is a butcher in the small town.Still hurt by the pain from her past relationship, Hélène keeps things at a platonic level with Thomas,who drops his guard,and begins to open up to Hélène about the horrors he saw in war.Whilst getting close to Thomas, Hélène takes her class out on a field trip,who soon discover that a serial killer is butchering the town.View on the film:Opening in a cave,writer/director Claude Chabrol and cinematographer Jean Rabier boil the film down to its starkest elements,with the yellow and reds in Hélène's house being rubbed into a dour paste.Following Hélène & Thomas in restrained whip- pans,Chabrol cuts around Thriller chills by cutting into a subtly stylish study of modern masculinity,by making the limited shots of blood take man back from the bourgeoisie of the present to the primal instinct of the past.Displaying on focus on the psychologically dramatic,the screenplay by Chabrol dissects Hélène and Thomas's attempts to find a fitting in modern society,which is sliced from Thomas giving his butchering work over to Hélène like a bunch of flowers,to Hélène doing the "old fashion" holidays that the pretty young things view as something almost as old as cave paintings. Simmering with unease over the final flame, Chabrol cuts around tension and bubbling thrills to explore modern masculinity,which whilst elegantly delivered does pull the title into a rather dry direction,via keeping Hélène and Thomas's relationship in a stilted position draining the drops of dangerous atmosphere from the film,as Thomas shows Hélène his real butchery skills.

Red-Barracuda Le Boucher is quite possibly the best film that Claude Chabrol ever made. Considering the quality of his output at the turn of the 70's this is quite something. In line with all his best movies from this time, Le Boucher is part thriller, part psychological drama. Also like his other key works, this one doesn't really focus on the crime so much as its emotional fallout. In it a school teacher begins a restrained relationship with a local butcher, whom she subsequently suspects of serial murder. As is the way with Chabrol, this discovery only complicates her feelings for this man.Once more Chabrol's muse Stéphane Audran stars. And as usual she is quite excellent in the role of the teacher. She imbues the character with the requisite complexity, as well as being a fragrant presence throughout. Co-star Jean Yanne, too, is quite exceptional as the title character. Both actors give the movie a dramatic weight that gives it its emotional core. But where this film differs from other Chabrol thrillers, is that there is more emphasis on suspense than normal. This combination of tension and character-driven drama is exquisitely handled by the director. For this reason Le Boucher may be the primary reason why Chabrol was referred to as 'the French Hitchcock'. Sir Alfred would have certainly been proud of this one.

Turfseer Le Boucher is billed as a thriller about a serial killer in a small, provincial French town. It's won accolades as a classic art film and its director, Claude Chabrol, has been compared to Hitchcock in his heyday. For those who are expecting to see another classic 'art film' or something akin to a scary, suspenseful Hitchcock film, you will be disappointed.The plot of Le Boucher is pretty basic. Stephane Audran plays Helene, an attractive woman in her late 30s, who is a primary schoolteacher in a small French town. At the wedding of one of her colleagues at the school, Leon, she meets Popaul, an Army veteran and local butcher. Helene is coming off a failed relationship and has retreated to the countryside, in order to avoid any future entanglements. Popaul immediately begins courting Helene and ends up making dinner for her, utilizing a fine choice cut of meat he brings from his butcher shop. At one point, Popaul shows up at Helene's school where she's teaching a class. He makes some inappropriate remarks in front of the children and for some reason, no red flags are raised in Helene's eyes.The relationship between Helene and Popaul continues to develop but finally Helene makes it clear that she's not interested in a physical relationship. Meanwhile, the police have begun investigating the first of a series of murders of young women in the town. Helene takes her school children on a class trip first to a cave where the group marvels at paintings created by ancient cave dwellers. On the way back, Helene and the children stop beneath an overhanging cliff and some blood drips from above on one of the children's' faces. Helene climbs up the hill and discovers Leon's wife's body, obviously murdered. Next to the body is a lighter which she had given Popaul as a birthday gift.There aren't many thrills and chills after that. Helene inexplicably fails to notify the police despite knowledge about the murders but also attempts to avoid Popaul. He finally confronts Helene inside the school house and menaces her with a knife. At the very moment that you believe he is going to kill Helene, the screen blacks out, and the next you know, the knife is sticking inside Popaul's stomach. It appears that this is a suicide attempt. Helene coolly drives Popaul to the hospital, where he expires.Chabrol never makes it clear why Helene decides not to cooperate with the police and eventually turn Popaul in. She seems to be a bright and educated woman and you would think that she would be especially horrified that Popaul murdered her colleague's wife. But she does nothing. Some reviewers interpret the final scene as Helene being the one who ended up killing Popaul; others sense Helene is satisfied after she learns from the doctor that Popaul has died. If that's true, Chabrol is perhaps suggesting that Helene has ambivalent feelings about Popaul. On one hand, she wants to give him the 'chance' of surviving by driving him to the hospital; on the other hand, she's relieved when he dies, since deep down she knows he's a monster. If in fact Helene is ambivalent about Popaul, Chabrol is deliberately choosing to be enigmatic. He hasn't provided us with enough reasons for Helene's ambivalence and it makes Helene's character unsympathetic, since her failure to notify the police, is a clear moral lapse.Le Boucher is perhaps best in capturing the atmosphere in a French provincial town. The acting is low-key but certainly noteworthy. Nonetheless, one waits in vain for something really dramatic to happen. When we finally get to the denouement, we already know that Popaul is the killer, and his suicide is a let-down. Couldn't there have been a little bit more of a surprise ending? On the basis of this film, I don't know why Chabrol has been compared to Hitchcock as the film lacks the necessary suspense to be included in the Hitchcock pantheon.

Shane James Bordas Hitchcock comparisons abound with Chabrol. However, you may be hard pressed to see anything other than a superficial similarity between them here.Although nicely acted and crafted, 'Le Boucher' has a curious sense of disengagement that will either fascinate or frustrate viewers. While not necessarily a bad thing in itself, this can also give the impression of a lack of depth. It's hard to fully discern what the character motivations are so, depending on your proclivity, you are likely to become either enthralled or disinterested in what they might actually be.Viewers familiar with Francois Truffaut will notice some similarities in approach but Chabrol lacks the concise poetry of that other French great. Even though the opening wedding sequence nicely sets up a scene of normality for the events that follow, it's rather overlong and a more Hitchcockian terseness would certainly have helped. Still, the film does have a strange charm and there are some excellent character ideas regarding the schoolteacher (content with her celibacy long after a bad relationship) being seduced? threatened? by the promise of new love from the local butcher - who may or may not be a murderer. These threads are either unexplored or deliberately withheld, depending on your point of view.A worthwhile watch for those interested but, possibly, not quite the masterpiece some might lead you to believe it is.