Save your money for something good and enjoyable

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

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.

In the village of Tremolat, Périgord, the lonely headmistress Helene Daville (Stéphane Audran) befriends the local butcher Paul Thomas (Jean Yanne), who has a trauma of war, in the wedding party of her colleague Leon Hamel (Mario Beccara). In spite of their friendship, they do not become lovers since Helene is still recovering from the disillusion of her last relationship. In Paul's birthday, Helene gives a lighter to him as a gift. During the excursion with her class to a cave in the woods, Helene finds the last victim of a serial killer that is stabbing young women in the area. She realizes that the woman is Leon's wife and she finds Paul's lighter in the crime scene but she hides the evidence from the police. When Paul visits her, she discovers that he still has the lighter and she feels relieved. However, when Paul paints the ceiling of her house, she makes a discovery that affects her sense of security.The unknown gem "Le Boucher" is a dark, intriguing and suspenseful love story by Claude Chabrol. The plot is completely unusual and very simple, it is not tagged by an specific genre and can be resumed in the storyline; however, the screenplay, direction, performances and camera work make the difference. The opening scene shows a beautiful area in the countryside of France where the plot takes place. Helene is a fascinating character with her contradictory and ambiguous behavior and relationship with Popaul. Their chemistry is also perfect. My vote is eight.Title (Brazil): "O Açougueiro" ("The Butcher")Note: On 06 February 2011 I saw this film again on DVD.

Claude Chabrol, the French director of many thrillers and dramas and other genres, is at his best when subtly but forcefully pulling the rug out from the viewer. This isn't your usual case of a romance story criss-crossed with a serial killer thriller. In fact, we're not made very much aware that there is a serial killer- save for a few mentions here and there- until halfway through the movie, and by the time we are it's full-throttle in a kind of expertly manipulated suspense, not in the usual sense but through an ominous musical score by Pierre Jansen and a movement of fluidity with the camera that tells the story sort of conventionally but not at the same time. It's a small, master's class in subverting the genre by making us care so much about the characters even as we know they're doomed from the happy opening.That's not to say that Chabrol has made anything that can't be enjoyed by one looking for a good entertaining thriller first and foremost. If anything the opening of the movie is what lures one in perfectly, as it's a very jovial in this wedding sequence one sees guests school-teacher Helene (Stephane Audran, Chabrol regular) and butcher Paul (Jean Yanne, perfect as the butcher), enjoying themselves and making good conversation. This stretches out into the first half of the film; a friendship develops around food that Paul brings over, and it's only when Paul thinks its time to go the 'next step' that he's told it can't be because of a past horrible relationship that Helen faced- horrible in the sense of disappointment. There's a disconnect emotionally that is left open, thus, going into the second half of the film, where finally we see what some of us would be waiting for: the serial killer plot.There's a string of murders involving women, and one of them- the bride from the opening- is a shocker not exactly for the revelation itself, per-say, but how Chabrol builds up to it. At first it's seen as the most suspenseful thing in the film so far as Helen leads her class along a mountainside and stops to have lunch. The music is playing right here, and it's really chilling for how simple it lays out the tension, like a weirdo standing across the street in a black cloak acting suspicious but, at the same time, too subtle to pin down. This adds to the sudden shock, then, after the music stops and finally the reveal happens via blood dripping on the kid's sandwich. This, however, is just one example of Chabrol's calm mastery as a director of the material.It would be one thing to go on and on about the eerie absorption of the camera-work, which goes between conventional stylization (for a French film of the period) and poetic editing and framing. Or to go on and on about the stunning work turned by Audran (going between an entire emotional palette, as it were, from happy to sobbing to frightened to pale and shot to hell) and Yanne (also great at what he's meant to be, our male protagonist and, sadly, eventual antagonist by default). But it's the emotional struggle that makes this compelling above all other good reasons to recommend.The Butcher posits a relationship that is platonic, naturalistic, and genuinely interesting; these aren't cookie-cutter characters but well-drawn and with things that make them identifiable even as they, early on, seem to go on about trivial things not related to the plot (a little like a Woody Allen movie). Then, when it switches gears bit by bit and the paranoia increases, by the time the climax comes it becomes very, ultimately, tragic. Chabrol goes to lengths to reveal, simply, the soul of a man one should not feel any sympathy for. That one close-up in the car ride to the hospital is one of the finest climaxes I might ever see in a movie from Europe, even anywhere. And damned if isn't representative of what Chabrol can do as a craftier but no less true-to-his-art member of the Cashier du cinema filmmaker club. A+

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.