UK Premiere: La Femme Infidèle (The Unfaithful Wife)

French New Wave film maker Claude Chabrol’s ice cold tale of infidelity, passion and violence – an unmissable Hitchcockian thriller set against a backdrop of bourgeois respectability in late 1960’s Versailles. When wealthy businessman, Charles Desvallées (Michel Bouquet), starts suspecting that his wife Hélène (Stéphane Audran) is having an affair, he decides to hire a private investigator to confirm his fears. As Charles’ obsession with Hélène’s betrayal deepens, the film takes a dark and unexpected turn. Thanks to its impeccable pacing, forensic direction, and restrained, sublime performances from Audran and Bouquet, every single shot from La Femme Infidèle contains psychological multitudes and a lesson in forensic thrilling filmmaking.

In the early 2000, Fatal Attraction director Adrian Lyne’s remake Unfaithful upped the erotic quotient and focussed on the “the body language of guilt” whilst most recently Andrey Zvangintsev’s Cannes winning adaptation Minotaur returned to Chabrol’s cool and detached style framing the infidelity within the immediate wider political context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. La Femme Infidèle will be the centrepiece of BFI Southbank’s upcoming Claude Chabrol: Elements of Crime retrospective and released in cinemas in September.

A restoration c/o Tamasa Distribution/BFI Distribution.

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