‘La fleur du mal‘ (English title ‘The Flower of Evil‘) made in 2003 by Claude Chabrol opens with a fairly long frame in which the camera takes us from the ground floor to the second floor of a bourgeois villa to stop on a corpse, which we guess is probably the result of a violent death. I don’t think Alfred Hitchcock, the master of suspense that Chabrol so much admired and whom he emulated in the last decades of his career, would have refused to put his signature on this scene. Whose body is it? How did the death happen? These are the questions that ‘La fleur du mal‘ will answer. However, this is not a simple police intrigue, because Chabrol, respecting many of the rules of the genre, is more interested in the social landscape – the wealthy French bourgeoisie with smoldering violence and secrets buried behind good manners and a refined lifestyle.
Most of the film’s characters belong to three generations of a well-doing family, with properties, liberal professions, lucrative businesses and political ambitions. When one of the ladies of the family is running for the position of municipal councilor with good chances to become mayor, an anonymous opponent distributes a printed manifesto (today they would do it on social networks) in which shocking details about the family are reveiled. Behind the good manners, fine dining, and the aesthetics of the objects they surround themselves with, the family seems to have a past and a present haunted by marital infidelity, fathers betraying their sons and sons hating their fathers, incest, and suspicious accidental deaths, possible crimes. The problem is that almost everything that is written in that manifesto is also true. Vice and corruption are passed down from generation to generation. Luis Buñuel described in his famous 1972 film ‘The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie‘, for this film by Claude Chabrol an alternative title could be ‘The Discreet Horror of the Bourgeoisie’.
The film is made with care and impeccable cinematic technique. The acting is perfect and Nathalie Baye‘s fans have the opportunity to see her in a consistent mature role. It is one of the late films by Claude Chabrol, and the director of the New Wave period can be found perhaps in the way he treats the love story of the young generation heroes and in the music emphasizing and amplifying the feeling of tension that accumulates. The cinematography is cold, with a lot of attention paid to details. The ending is open to debate by the audiences, but the film’s heroes don’t seem to have much hesitation or scruples. The party goes on.