An average movie

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but since it was directed by Claude Chabrol and since it was available on Netflix, I thought I might as well check it out. At the time, Chabrol was going through a string of failures and this movie was apparently a big flop at the box-office as well which almost completely derailed Chabrol’s career. It’s interesting because something similar happened with Charles Chaplin who also tried more than a decade before to make a movie about the same story (‘Monsieur Verdoux’) but it was also a huge failure at the time. Anyway, it’s definitely a fascinating story but, in this case, I’m afraid Chabrol’s directing felt terribly flat. To make things worse, I thought it was pretty messy. I mean, there was no real introduction to Henri-Desiré Landru and, out of the blue, he got some letters from the post office and started his killing spree. Finally, the tone was also really uneven. It’s interesting that these legendary directors decided both to make a dark satire but I really doubt that it was the best approach with this material. Indeed, while watching this movie, Landru did remind me of Ted Bundy in the sense that both men were some charismatic seducers but also some hustlers, some pathological liars and they both proclaimed their innocence until their very end. I mean, can you imagine making a dark satirical comedy about Bundy? At least, the cast was pretty cool and you had many lovely ladies involved such as Michèle Morgan, Danielle Darrieux and Stéphane Audran but it’s a pity that they were all given so little to do. On the other, it had been a while since I saw Charles Denner in a movie and he was pretty much pitch-perfect here. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of its flaws, it was still a decent watch though and I think it is worth a look, especially if you are interested in Claude Chabrol’s work.