Tonight Claude Chabrol’s "The Unfaithful Wife" at the Greek Film Archive’s open-air cinema Laïs

When: Monsday 6 July | 21:15
Where: LAIS Open Air Cinema, 48 Iera Odos str. & 134-136 Megalou Alexander str. | Free Admission

In collaboration with the Plein-Air Festival of the French Institute of Greece.

The almost archetypal plot of “The Unfaithful Wife” begins with suspicions spreading like poison in the mind of a wealthy man that his beautiful wife is cheating on him. This triggers a series of almost ritualistic actions that will confirm his fears and bring him face to face with her lover.

At that very point, Chabrol, admittedly influenced by the existentialist movement, would discover in his plot direct parallels to Camus’s “The Stranger”, exploring from within the essence and appearance, the fears, and the collective complicity of the French bourgeoisie. The vile crime of the unfaithful woman is not committed in some corner of the dark underworld, but takes place in the sunlit drawing rooms of the Parisian suburbs. The director films them with geometric precision, filling their lifeless nature with silence and subdued tension (which the protagonists convey exceptionally well through their internal performances). The spaces become the setting for a deeply political examination of the urban morals of the era, where the sardonic Chabrol runs wild, renewing the wedding vows of the doomed couple with an unholy contract, sealed with blood.

«The Unfaithful Wife» remains a benchmark for the erotic thriller genre and is, to this day, its creator’s most popular film. For the connoisseur, it is unadulterated film vitriol served in a tall crystal glass, a work of aristocratic elegance that treats social status and crime as aphrodisiacs. Always with an ironic tone, always with the confidence of a slow-moving reptile that, through velvety tracking shots and incredible directorial flashes of inspiration, encircles its heroes to trap them in their class-based destiny. Thodoris Karamanolis

Directed by: Claude Chabrol | Starring: Stéphane Audran, Michel Bouquet, Maurice Ronet | Duration: 98' | Year of Production: 1969 | Greek subtitles