Word: frisson
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Director Claude Chabrol, a disciple of Hitchcock, shoots more for nuance than frisson. It is his wily variations on a hoary theme that give La Femme Infidèle its own small distinction. A wealthy Parisian insurance man (Michel Bouquet) takes casual note that his supple young wife (Stephane Audran) acts rather nervous when he interrupts her on the telephone. He engages a private detective to follow her on her shopping trips to Paris and has his worst suspicions quickly confirmed: she is having an affair. Her paramour is a writer (Maurice Ronet) who lives mostly off his "independent means...
...since Polanski, a Pole, is directing in a language foreign to him, the English dialogue doesn't add much. (Catherine Deneuve, who plays the girl, and Yvette Furneaux, who plays her sister, are speaking in a foreign language too.) Repulsion is undeniably interesting, and should give most people frisson or two. But like the opening credits, which glide up and down Miss Deneuve's glistening eyeball, the movie as whole is silly and uninspired...