La Femme infidèle (1969)
Directed by Claude Chabrol

Film Review

On the face of it, La Femme infidèle would appear to be one of Claude Chabrol's most straightforward films, a simple case of marital infidelity and revenge presented to us as a lightweight Hitchcockian thriller. Whilst such a simplistic reading of the film does not denude it of entertainment value it prevents us from seeing its author's real intention, which is to serve up another wry commentary on the shallowness and duplicity of bourgeois existence.  In his two preceding films, Le Scandale (1967) and Les Biches (1968), Chabrol had fired his opening salvo against the bourgeoisie and for the remainder of his career as a filmmaker this would be his primary preoccupation, picking up from where Buñuel left off and digging his claws every deeper into the bloated flesh of France's most complacent and hypocritical social class.

The two main protagonists in La Femme infidèle - Charles and Hélène Desvallées - are typical Chabrol archetypes, a middle-aged husband and wife whose comfortable upper middle-class existence is a perfect sham that prevents both characters from ever achieving fulfilment in their lives.  Right from the very first scene, an idyllic snapshot of family life, we are struck by the distance between them: whenever they talk, they appear to be completely oblivious of what the other is saying.  These two individuals may be going through the motions of conjugal life but emotionally and intellectually they might as well be on separate planets.  Their union is as pointless as it is passionless, the central irony being that they are actually in love with one another.

Charles manifests his love for Hélène by becoming obsessively jealous when he suspects she has taken a lover.  His obsession compels him to hunt down his rival and murder him in cold blood.  Hélène repays the compliment by not betraying her husband to the authorities when she realises he has killed her lover.  The tragedy is that, even after these two have made their grand gestures of amorous attachment, they still find it impossible to communicate what they feel.  It is as if bourgeois decorum has robbed them of the ability to express what they feel for one another, forcing them to stay within their own separate worlds, through fear that their base animal instincts may get the better of them.  The title is of course intended in an ironic vein.  Hélène is unfaithful not to her husband but to the easily disposable substitute, the lover who does not belong to her class and is therefore not subject to the soulless strictures of bourgeois etiquette.  Hélène's illicit lover is just a commodity, a thing of no real intrinsic value, soon forgotten, easily replaceable.

Positively basting in cynicism and black humour, La Femme infidèle was the film that marked the beginning of Claude Chabrol's most successful period as a filmmaker.  After a promising debut in the late 1950s and early 1960s with such films as Le Beau Serge (1958) and Les Bonnes femmes (1960), Chabrol struggled to keep pace with his Nouvelle Vague contemporaries and ended up turning out third rate spy thrillers in the mid-1960s for the most undiscerning of mainstream audiences.  Through a series of films that he made in the late 1960s - La Femme infidèle, Que la bête meure and Le Boucher - Chabrol found his voice and developed a distinctive style of filmmaking that led him to be dubbed France's answer to Alfred Hitchcock.  This was Chabrol's golden period, in which most of his films conformed to the same pattern: subtly disturbing psychological thrillers that critiqued the failings of the bourgeoisie.

At the time, Chabrol had the good fortune to be married to Stéphane Audran, a sublime actress who, with her natural air of superiority, was the perfect muse for his anti-bourgeois amusements.  Audran was married to Chabrol from 1964 and to 1980, during which time she played a prominent role in ten of his films.  The part she plays in La Femme infidèle resurfaced in several subsequent Chabrol films, most often named Hélène (presumably after the troublesome Helen of Greek legend).  In Juste avant la nuit (1971), Audran's Hélène is once again paired with Michel Bouquet's Charles, the only difference being that this time round the husband is the unfaithful party.  Patterns, in particular the use of doubles, are a recurring feature of Chabrol's cinema and it is always interesting to compare and contrast the characters and scenarios in his films, as this provides a deeper insight into the author's intention and psychology than any one of his films taken in isolation.  

The name 'Charles' crops up again and again in Chabrol's oeuvre, often as a complex and troubled character, and it is tempting to see him as a kind of merciless self-portrait - someone who is incapable of holding onto the tiny patch of paradise he has found for himself.  If Charles is indeed Chabrol, then Hélène must be his femme idéale, the goddess he knows he can never possess indefinitely.  By making La Femme infidèle could Chabrol have been, either consciously or subconsciously, reflecting on the transience of his own perfect marriage. (Desvallée, the surname of the married couple in the film, is not so far from Audran's own birthname, Dacheville).  Or is he, like the ill-fated Charles, resorting to a grand gesture to assert his devotion to his own real-life Hélène?  As the two protagonists are drawn apart in the closing moments of the film, the distance between them exaggerated by the voyeuristic camerawork that would become one of the director's trademarks, there seems to be an admission of defeat.  The ones who cannot communicate their love but instead lock it away in their hearts are bound to be separated.  Pity the bourgeoisie.

Adrian Lyne directed an American remake of the film, Unfaithful (2002) starring Richard Gere and Diane Lane.

Film Synopsis

Charles Desvallées is a respectable insurance agent who lives with his younger wife Hélène and their son Michel at their comfortable villa in the leafy suburbs of Paris.  They are the model of the happily settled bourgeois family, but Hélène has a secret she intends keeping from her devoted husband.  Three times a week, the seemingly faithful wife slips away to join her lover, Victor Pegala, at his home for an afternoon of illicit pleasure.  Charles Desvallées is not the kind of man who can bear to have a rival, so when he discovers that his wife is cheating on him he decides to take matters into his own hands.

With the help of a private detective, he manages to obtain Victor's address and he is soon paying his rival a friendly social call, whilst Hélène is busy hosting their son's birthday party.  After gaining Victor's confidence, Charles picks up a statuette and strikes him on the head.  Having taken care to remove all sign of his presence in the apartment, Charles places the body of the dead man in the boot of his car and then dumps it in a pond.  He then returns to his wife, who has not the slightest suspicion that he has just murdered her lover.

As the police begin their investigation into Victor's death, it seems that nothing has altered in the relationship between Charles and Hélène.  They go on living together as they always have, not as two people who are passionately in love, but as willing partners in the deception of bourgeois respectability. Charles has a worrying moment when the police turn up at his house, having found his wife's name in the dead man's address book.  But life goes on as before, until Hélène discovers who killed her lover.  Now it seems the charade is over...