I still remember my cardinal stamp of Claude Chabrol. When I started getting interested in foreign cinema and read about things like the French Contemporary Sway, Chabrol was (and still is) always cited as the most Hitchcockian of his Hitchcock-loving cohorts. So, with the first two films of Chabrol’s that I managed to put my hands on, This Manservant Must Die and The Unfaithful Wife, I was altogether surprised to find that he worked on a level very odd from Hitchcock’s commercial thrillers and aimed against a much more intellectual tone.
1994’s L’Enfer is about a Paul (Francois Cluzet- Chocolat, Late August, Early September) and Nelly (Emmanuelle Beart- Manon of the Spring, 8 Women) Prieur, an attractive couple with a young child who run a small lakeside resort. Paul is a hard working, self made man, and Nelly is a beautiful, care free, and supportive wife. But the stresses of maintaining their life and business woes are getting to Paul and making him increasingly anxious. When he begins to notice spots in the day when Nelly is unaccounted for, incriminating situations, and the glances of other men, Paul suspects his wife of infidelity. He begins to follow and question her, but in the absence of any solid proof, Paul creates delusional scenarios and begins to listen to the suspicious voice in his head.
Not surprisingly, the results are excellent when you have a first rate cast and lead actors, an expert director, all working from as script by another master suspense film maker, Henri-Georges Clouzot (Le Corbeau, Diabolique, The Wages of Fear), who actually attempted to make the film in 1964 but never completed it due to setbacks ranging from replacing his lead actor to a heart attack.
L’Enfer is a film I can relate to, and, no, not because I hear voices in my head. I can, in my relationships, be a jealous, suspicious person. It is a flaw I have deeply examined and more or less determined comes not so much from personal insecurity as much as a pessimistic view of human nature. The Nelly/Paul dynamic reminds me (again, without the schitzo element) of the relationship I had with my first girlfriend. Although virginal, she unwittingly exuded sexuality and I had a hard time dealing with the fact that her attractiveness drew so much attention. It was this uncontrollable force, that in the end, I could not contend with. Nelly appears much the same way, she is spritely and looks like she pheremonally oozes sex. For the pressured Paul, this slowly spirals into the madness of paranoia and delusion. In his mind, he creates a sex siren image of his wife, complete with flirtatious eyes and purring voice, and no matter how he tries to reign his sanity in, the obsessiveness of jealousy overwhelms him.
So, there it is, a beautiful couple, an idyllic life, but from the very first frames there is that intangible presence of the weight of doubt. It grows and grows. Paranoia consumes. L’Enfer is a fantastic film about the brute, monestrous nature of jealousy. Chabrol is subtle with the ways he shows Paul’s increasing madness, including shifting from reality to Paul’s POV, which many reviewers misinterpreted as real and therefore questioned Nelly’s fidelity. It becomes pretty clear, perhaps more so with a second or third viewing, that Paul is insane, and though Nelly may playfully toy with his suspicions at first (before she realizes he is bonkers), she is very much a devoted wife. And, that voice in his head? Well, it is not even his own. The madness itself speaks to him. He tries to argue. He tries to deny it. But it may already be too late. That is the mystery we’ll never know.