I decided to watch ‘Péril en la demeure‘ (English title is ‘Death in a French Garden‘) mainly for Michel Piccoli, an actor I really like. But his is a supporting role and he appears in only a few scenes. This was the first of my disappointments with this film. Michel Deville is a director who was quite prolific between the ’60s and the ’80s and many of his films – comedies or thrillers, featuring hot, impossible and illicit love affairs in most of them – often manage to create an attractive cinematic atmosphere. ‘Peril en la demeure‘ can be categorized as an erotic thriller, with an adulterous love story complicating itself in a criminal intrigue, but Deville’s tendency to focus on style rather than substance manages to annihilate both facets of the story. ‘Péril en la demeure‘ is a film that has aged badly, the 37 years that passed since its production are visible not only in car brands, in videotapes or in the form of phones but also, or especially, in the script.
Music teacher David is hired by the well-to-do couple Graham and Julia to give guitar lessons to their talented and beautiful daughter Vivianne, who looks amazingly as Nabokov’s Lolita. Only a few minutes in the film David and Julia find themselves in bed, involved in a hot relationship. Not long after, they discover that they are being watched and even filmed on videotapes, perhaps by the curious neighbor Edwige, perhaps by the mysterious Daniel who appears as a savior at some point in David’s life and confesses to him that he is a professional … paid killer. Inevitably, at some point in the story, dead bodies will show up.
‘Péril en la demeure‘ brings together two stories – one can be called romantic, the other a thriller. For this genre of films to succeed, the two narrative threads need to work together and amplify each other. The problem is that both stories lack credibility and their combination doesn’t work or bind them together. I failed to understand either the romantic motivations of the characters or the logic of the detective action. Why does the rich woman suddenly fall in love with the teacher who has only one egg in his otherwise empty refrigerator? (besides that he eats it with chocolate, because he probably has no money for bread!). Christophe Malavoy as David does not give us enough reasons, he seems more puzzled by what is happening to him than seductive. Who planned the theft and the murders? Was seduction part of the plan? Nothing makes much sense. There are also good parts in this film, but they can be found in cinematic details, such as the sets (decadent houses with obligatory gardens, good for burying the traces of crimes), the music and some remarkable acting performances. Nicole Garcia, in the period when she had not started her career as a director, looks great. Anémone and Richard Bohringer, actors I hadn’t noticed before, create two excellent, vague and slightly mysterious, supporting roles. Anaïs Jeanneret, the young and beautiful actress who played the daughter in this film is amazing. Where did her career disappear? But all this is too little to save, at least from the perspective of 2022, this film.