The Darling does = Les Biches [Widescreen]

A psychological thriller involving a triangle between a predatory older woman, Frederique, a young waif, ‘Why’, and Paul, an architect. Interest lies in the cool elegance of the surfaces, the schematic complexity of the human relationships with their changing combinations of homosexual and heterosexual attraction, and the special sense of the unspoken shifts in those relationships. The classical symmetry and spareness of Chabrol’s mise-en-scene is reminiscent of Fritz Lang’s cinema. In this geometry of human relationships the triangle ultimately becomes a circle as one personality ‘consumes’ another. This is the first of the psychological dramas constituting Chabrol’s mature phase. Cast includes Stephane Audran, Jean-Louis Trintignant and Jacqueline Tassard. In French with English subtitles.