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The Worst Film Ever

A Disappointing Continuation

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

As my purpose in writing these reviews is primarily to impart enthusiasm for films I greatly admire, I have little taste or time for rushing into print over ones that fall far short of outstanding. Let me say at the outset that I am a great admirer of Claude Chabrol at his best, I will go even further and claim that the trilogy of works he directed in 1969 and 1970, "La Femme Infidele", "Que la Bete Meurt" and "Le Boucher", dark, mesmerising yet compassionate explorations of disturbed human psyche, are among the crowning treasures of French cinema. I suppose the problem with Chabrol was that he was so prolific. Good as some of his later films were such as "La Ceremonie" and "Une Affaire de Femmes" he never again scaled those earlier heights. There are potboilers galore, mostly fairly watchable, though disappointing when one thinks of the past greatness of their creator. What to make though of "La Rupture", surely the most bizarrely outlandish of those far too many disappointments? A formidably wealthy grandfather (the most over-the-top of Chabrol's many swipes at the bourgeoisie) will go to any extreme to wrest control of his grandson from the boy's morally impeccable mother even though the youngster has sustained a serious head injury by his drug-ridden son, the boy's father. Next move to hire a shady layabout with a nymphomaniac girlfriend to trump something up that will prove the mother morally unfit to have custody of the boy. What better than to get girlfriend to dress up as mum, then for both of them to kidnap the mentally handicapped daughter of his and mum's landlady, feed the girl with drugged sweeties that will enable her to respond with pleasurable excitement to a depraved movie. To give this nonsense a semblance of artistic credence a mysterious balloon seller pops up from time to time in the local park suggesting some sort of symbolism and Pierre Jansen's atonal score punctuates the action with an aura of awesomeness that suggests something disturbing could be about to happen. Why am I bothering with all this? Simply to counter the many user reviews that express the view that "Le Rupture" is one of Chabrol's finest works. Its character types, the goodies - mother, the hospital doctor and the good-natured lawyer, the baddies - grandfather, the layabout and the layabout's girlfriend, the sillies - the card-playing elderly biddies and the histrionic actor in the guest house are all two- dimensional. All are light years away in depth from the husband driven by love and jealousy to act as he does in "La Femme Infidele", the bereaved father seeking some form of consolation in home movies of happy days past in "Que la Bete Meure" and the eponymous butcher whose love of the school teacher is heartrendingly impossible to reach any fruition given his background; reminders of the greatness Chabrol could be capable of achieving. In these he had something uniquely special to say about the nature of love.

The Breach (aka La rupture) is a film made by celebrated French director Claude Chabrol in the middle of his golden period at the turn of the 70's. Like most of his other films from this time, it is a psychological thriller that is more interested in character interactions than in suspense. While it is true that there is some of that present here too, there isn't a lot and the film only truly moves into thriller territory in its final quarter. In fact, the switch is quite jarring and has left some thinking it doesn't fit very well alongside what has gone before. I kind of liked the ending though, it isn't especially realistic and even becomes a bit surreal, yet the story on the whole has got an oddness about it generally, typified by the unsettling and somewhat off-centre musical score used throughout. The story revolves around a woman called Hélène who is the wife of a rich layabout drug addict. One day he attacks her and their child, leaving the boy hospitalised. Hélène attacks him back leaving him with a head injury. His rich father hires a sleazy friend of the family to befriend Hélène with the objective of incriminating her, leading to a divorce that would favour his son.Like a lot of Chabrol's best works this one stars his wife, the radiant Stéphane Audran who is, once more, extremely good and sympathetic as Hélène, Jean-Pierre Cassel is also impressive as her manipulative 'friend', while it would be remiss not to mention Catherine Rouvel also, who is a lot of fun as his highly sexed girlfriend who pleasingly spends most of the film in a state of undress (ooh la la). In fact, there is a plethora of oddball side characters in this one, most live in the boarding house where the majority of the action revolves around, such as three old ladies who continually play with Tarot cards, a mentally-backwards girl and an overly-dramatic actor. On top of this, it's nicely photographed, especially in the surreal park scene towards the end where things get a little trippy. The film criticises the bourgeois, with the rich grandparents acting like it is their right to dictate events purely on account of their financial strength. But the film works mainly as an off-kilter psychological drama/thriller, underpinned by fine acting and some good direction.

When the aspirant writer Charles Régnier (Jean-Claude Drouot), who is drug addicted and mentally ill, throws his four year-old son Michel against the kitchen wall in a rage attack, his wife Hélène (Stéphane Audran) defends her son and herself, hitting Charles several times with a frying pan. Her neighbor takes Hélène and Michel to the hospital and the boy has to be interned with a broken leg and concussion. Hélène works as bartender and has supported her family alone since her wealthy father-in-law Ludovic Régnier (Michel Bouquet) hates that Charles has married with someone uneducated from the lower classes. Hélène finds a low-budget boarding house nearby the hospital and rents a simple room to be close to her beloved son. Further, she hires a lawyer to get the divorce and the custody of Michel. Ludovic is advised by his lawyer that Hélène would win the custody and he hires the lowlife Paul Thomas (Jean- Pierre Cassel), who is totally broken and desperately needs money, to find dirt evidences against the Hélène. The vile Paul lures Hélène telling that he is very ill and moves to the boarding house. After a while, he does not find anything against Hélène and he decides to fabricate evidences to destroy her reputation. But things do not work as planned.I have seen many excellent films of the master of suspense Claude Chabrol, but "La Rupture" is probably the best film I have seen of this French director and a masterpiece of human cruelty and sordidness. Chabrol usually criticizes the bourgeois class in his movies, and the fight between classes is shown in "La Rupture", with a sharp demonstration of how destructive the prejudice and the power of money may be. The plot presents wealthy characters; some of them are just glanced like the actor in the boarding house but everyone has an important role in the dark story. Paul Thomas is among the most despicable villains I have ever seen, with his corrupted soul. I could write pages about this masterpiece but instead, I prefer to recommend to viewers of good taste to see it. My vote is ten.Title (Brazil): Not Available

After having heard so much about the work of Chabrol, I was frankly disappointed with this film, which was my first encounter with his work. Not only did I find the pacing of the film agonisingly slow and lumbering, I found the plot to be frankly ludicrous. Whilst this is not always a problem,I can't believe that people can appreciate such an ill thought out plotline . I also found the hints at symbolism to be deeply confused and the anti-bourgeois sentiment to be far to "in your face". On the whole, a let down.