Let's be realistic.

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

The acting in this movie is really good.

I only managed to get just past the point of the husband's murder of his wife's lover before switching off because it was far too late to continue with this dulling example of so-called French "intellectual chic" of the 1960s. Some examples back then were so bad - "deep intellectual musing" over just a cup of coffee or glass of wine etc. Here, we fell about laughing about two things. One, whenever the husband's vivacious and flirty mini-skirted secretary made her far too infrequent flighty appearances on screen - that really brought the screen to life. Two, which had us both laughing out loud: the scene where the husband bounds up the body of the murdered lover, struggles the whole time he is dragging it out of the latter's ground floor flat to push it with difficulty into the boot of his car, in broad daylight and right opposite an apartment block with windows (a previous scene had shown a window cleaner at the apartment block) - and yet, and yet, not a single car passes by the whole time. Nor, however much one tries to find them on screen, can a single human being be seen. And this is presumably in the morning or afternoon of a busy Parisian day in the suburb of Neuilly. What a lucky tourist it would be to find such peace and quiet anywhere today in modern day Paris. And yet again, another pretentious French film from the 1960s.

In my desire to discover the work of Claude Chabrol, I watched The Unfaithful Wife. And I regret saying it was a disappointment.Chabrol constructs a capable, but unmemorable suspense movie. He knows the language and structure of the genre, but the movie lacks that extra element that makes it special.A loving husband suspects his wife is betraying him with another man. He hires a private detective to prove him right. Then he decides to confront the lover. There's no point describing the rest of the story, but then again there's nothing worth describing afterwards. It's a straightforward, banal plot without any innovation, interesting dialogue or great acting to rise it above mediocrity.There is perhaps fifteen minutes worth of tension, suspense or originality in the movie. They occur when the husband meets the lover. He does it in a charming, friendly way. He insinuates himself into the lover's apartment with full honesty but pretending not to care about the affair. He earns the lover's trust. All the time the viewer is thinking what is going to happen next. It's genuinely thrilling, but that's it.There's an attempt at ambiguity at the end of the movie, but rather than being something that challenges our ideas or values, it's just one of those dull ambiguous endings that desperate directors of thrillers end their unspectacular movies with, where we're left wondering whether the killer is or is not going to be caught. Seeing as how that's not really the point of the movie, and seeing how the viewer is never seduced into caring about the characters all, it's quite pointless.Claude Chabrol is so praise - he's called the French Hitchcock; but people can be too generous in their compliments sometimes - that I'm hoping my next attempt at his movies will be better. But this was a poor introduction.

THE UNFAITFUL WIFE (Claude Chabrol - France 1968).Claude Chabrol's "La Femme infidèle" is an excellent thriller, or "A Psycho-sexual Study in Murder" as the film was advertised on certain posters, reflecting his cynical disgust against the petty bourgeoisie. Charles Desvallées (Michel Bouquet) becomes suspicious his wife Hélène (Stéphane Audran) is having an affair. Charles hires a private detective who comes up with the name of Victor Pegala (Maurice Ronet) and then goes off to confront his wife's lover. Bouquet and Audran pitch their roles superbly and with an excellent score, Chabrol's cold, cynical dissection of marriage and murder is just as good as anything Hitchcock ever made. Yet, the film has Chabrol's own distinctly detached style, employing different point of view shots, instantly making the viewer part of the couple's troublesome marriage as we uncomfortably watch Stéphane Audran inevitably on her way to be unmasked. Chabrol stages a long scene giving more than a little nod to Hitchcock's PSYCHO. Besides Bouquet who always gives a tongue-in-cheek performance, his charming honey-bunny assistant in his office had me laughing each time she made her appearance. Remade in 2002 with Richard Gere and Diane Lane as UNFAITHFUL.Camera Obscura --- 8/10

There are at least two ways of describing this entry: Early Chabrol and/or Vintage Chabrol. Depends on what you mean by love. Chronologically it dates from his early days as writer-director and if you are moved to describe those days as vintage then who am I to argue. Certainly it has Chabrol's signature all over it; the cool, almost passionless behaviour of the principals, the affluent lifestyles usually on the fringes of large cities (in this case Versailles and Neuilly) which could be read by those who have nothing better to do as a metaphor for the leading characters who could be said to exist on the fringes of civilised behaviour. This time around Michel Bouquet is in a well established marriage with Stephane Audran - at one point Audran remarks to their son that he will soon be ten years old - and although he seems to have little interest in sleeping with her, witness his polite rejection of her sexual overtures, he doesn't take too kindly to Maurice Ronet pinch-hitting for him. Having acquired Ronet's address via private heat he pays a social call on his wife's lover and almost as an afterthought brutally kills him whilst discussing the situation as one civilised man to another. Naturally Audran is in the frame yet soon enough the attention switches to Bouquet at which point Audran, realising what has happened, destroys evidence that could help convict Bouquet. Like I said, civilised to a fare-thee-well. Lots of quality on offer here, Writing, Direction, Acting, Photography all up to snuff and beyond. Highly enjoyable.