OK, it's clear that this isn't a "great movie". It has some kind of tabloid energy that connects it to films by a director like Fuller. And it's committed to a very raw kind of amateurism that, as far as I know, is unique in Chabrol's oeuvre. The main actor was Chabrol's main screenwriter (Paul Gegauff), who also performs (with Chabrol's son) the 4-hand piano music used throughout the film (well, there is a one - pianist Schubert Impromptu at a key point). The couple and kid are a real-life couple and kid. And so on. This all lends a special intensity to the film but it also creates a lack of nuance. But I find that this energy corresponds to a certain experience I have (via my parents) of a marriage marked by emotional battering better than more nuanced films do. I wish Chabrol would have figured out a way to combine this rawness with his usual suavity in later films. Instead we end up with tired style exercises like Merci Pour Le Chocolat (although he really captures Swiss-ness in that film, I have to admit). Chabrol has a little trick, which I don't love, of adding some "surreal" element to his films right near the end. In this film, it's the veil as symbol of death. My girlfriend said "5 people couldn't pull him off her?" She didn't know that there's this kind of suspension near the end of many Chabrols. Anyway, I want to point out how Woody Allen seems to have stolen the 2 crab sequences for Annie Hall (the lobster sequences). In the 1st, the wife has an annoying fear of the crab. In the second, on the same beach, the new wife is masterful with the crab, and this makes Gegauff miss the 1st wife's now - endearing fear. Check it out.
Review of Pleasure Party
