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Pretty Good

One of my all time favorites.

Great Film overall

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Patricia Highsmith created one fascinating character in her novel: Nickie, the ex-wife of Robert Forester, here called Veronique. Virginie Thevenet plays her and she is terrific. Seductive, lying, violent and completely fascinating, she is the one thing in the movie that really works. Malavoy acts like a Boy Scout troop leader, May is dull and lifeless and Kalfon is hard to believe as a detective. Only Penot as the beefy handsome coward Soulages manages to rise to Thevenet's level. Chabrol was known for his cold, passionless thrillers; you went to them out of a sense of duty. Wasn't he after all one of the founding members of the New Wave? See it if it turns up on late night TV, and there's nothing else to watch.

Robert an architect and artist finds himself working in Vichy. We watch him as the story begins, watching surreptitiously a young and attractive woman living in an ivied covered house in a forested area. Juliette, the woman of the house, senses she is being watched, although she has no basis for her suspicion. Juliette has a strange relationship with Patrick, a pharmaceutical salesman who travels in the region.One day, Robert is bold enough to show up at Juliette's door. She is curious, realizing he might be the presence she felt on the other side of her fence. She feels attracted to the handsome Robert, who happens to be separated from Veronique, a vulgar wife in Paris. Patrick becomes jealous watching his girlfriend's attentions on Patrick. Robert, in turn has had mental problems and had been treated for his condition, now being in better mental health. Juliette clearly fancies Robert.After a road confrontation where Patrick has been following Robert and Juliette, as he is taking her home, the two men fight. Patrick and Robert end up by a river, where Patrick lands after being hit. Robert fishes him out so he does not drown. Patrick is reported missing and the local police becomes involved. What no one realizes is that Patrick has sided with Robert's estranged wife in order to create trouble for the architect."The Cry of the Owl" is a film directed by Claude Chabrol and based on a Patricia Highsmith story. The adaptation was by M. Chabrol and Odile Barski, a frequent collaborator. This film from 1987 falls into the director's middle period which is not as important as his early and late efforts, but being a Chabrol film, it is a must for his admirers.The film, as seen today, seems to be a bit dated. The machinations between Patrick and Veronique to do harm to Robert are roughly handled. The novel was not exactly one of Ms. Highsmith's best, but it suffers in the relocation to France, something which did not happen with Chabrol's adaptation of novels by Ruth Rendell, just to mention one writer.The best thing in the film is Christophe Malavoy who plays Robert. Mathilda May is too bland for the obsessed Juliette. Jacques Perrot seen as Patrick is not creepy enough and Virginie Tenevent, who is Veronique is perfectly vulgar as the sleazy former wife.

A film described as being "in the Hitchcock tradition" usually means "a cheap imitation", and this French import is no exception. Director Claude Chabrol tries hard to invoke the spirit of the Master by adapting his screenplay from a story by Patricia Highsmith (author of 'Strangers on a Train') about a divorced artist with a fixation about birds (sound familiar?), whose voyeuristic attraction to the unhappily marries Mathilda May leads to a perfectly innocent, platonic friendship between two manic-depressive people. The plot kicks into gear after May's jealous husband disappears; birdman Christophe Malavoy is then accused of foul play, and the film goes to pieces in a hurry, collapsing into a random sampling of routine plot twists before ending in an unfair, inconclusive freeze-frame. It might have been an entertaining whodunit, but unlike his mentor Chabrol takes his scenario far too seriously: you only have to imagine the actors speaking their dialogue in English straight from the subtitles to realize how silly it really is. The film was made in 1987 but until 1991 was never released on this side of the Atlantic, and for good reason.

M. Chabrol has done a strong, creditable job of transferring the powerfully discomforting world of Patricia Highsmith to the screen. Highsmith's characters become moral monsters through a condition of absolute confidence in their own warped psyches. These characters never learn, or understand themselves. Their lies to each other are absolute because they lie to themselves absolutely. No cliché goes unpunished. Characters become moral monsters without losing their sense of rightness. They seem powerless not to act in self-destructive ways.The film is not equal to "Strangers on a Train" or "Purple Noon," other adaptations of Highsmith's work. But it is faithful in spirit to a novel which is itself not equal to the literary sources of these films. See it with an open mind and revel in the creepiness. Chabrol is a sufficiently great artist to allow another great artist her night cry.