The flower of evil seen by its actresses: “Chabrol’s films have something universal”

“Chabrol’s films have something universal,” said Nathalie Baye, Suzanne Flon and Mélanie Doutey, in February 2003.

Can guilt is transmitted, like certain diseases, from generation to generation? What effects can an unspoken fault have for the culprit but also for his descendants and his family?

At the end of the Second World War, in the deleterious atmosphere of account settlements linked to collaboration, a woman is acquitted of a crime that she might have committed. Nowadays, during the last municipal elections, an anonymous leaflet addressed to his descendants comes to bring up this past disorder …

The flower of evilfilm of Claude Chabrol Bringing in particular Nathalie Baye, Mélanie Doutey, Suzanne Flon, Benoît Magimel and Bernard Le Coq, was released in the cinema in 2003. He will return this evening to Arte, but note that he is already visible in replay on the chain website).

When it comes out, First had been a little disappointed with this family drama, which Sophie Grassin presented in her criticism as “A Chabrol Plan-Plan” Compared to other creaky works on the customs of his contemporaries, of which he had made a specialty, of the ceremony at thank you for chocolate. The film is far from completely missed, and is worth a look only for its 5-star cast and double theme, often developed by the filmmaker.

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Within the April issue of that year, his three main actresses confided in our pages, and told the pride of having been invited to the filmmaker’s universe.

First: Chabrol is a very popular filmmaker, his films often go on TV, his universe is marked. Did you feel from the start of known ground?
Nathalie / The first day, when we arrive on the set, we land in a team who knows each other by heart and who looks in the same direction. Little by little, when we see Claude looking for things in the staging, putting her camera where we did not expect him to create a troubled atmosphere, we start to perceive the film with the Chabrol, to sniff this universe of no -Dits, of sub-hearing, and it becomes an additional pleasure.

All the characters are very ambiguous, they have several facets. That
should both be exciting and difficult to play?
Suzanne / It is especially exciting. The monocorded characters, thank you very much!

Nathalie, you interpret a big bourgeois who borders on caricature. This must require extreme precision in the game.
Nathalie / My character is at the limit of caricature, but it is also very realistic, in particular at the clothing. The costume designer first offered me very pretty, very attractive outfits, but which did not satisfy me. Look at the women ministers: in general, they have tailors with garish colors because you have to be dynamic and in good humor.

Did Chabrol briefed you on the US of the Bordeaux bourgeoisie?
Mélanie / He didn’t need it. The evidence of this family was done when arriving on the set.

Nathalie / The sets, for example, are important. This house where most of the action is happening tells lots of things. The situation, the story and the dialogues also means that at one point, we enter the mold. Mélanie and I, we have very few scenes together but, paradoxically, it is very telling: it induces that this mother and this girl are very accomplices, that they do not need to talk to each other a lot to understand each other.

Is Chabrol himself a bourgeois?
Nathalie / It is unclassifiable, extraordinary.
Suzanne / It’s Chabrol!

Is it because it is unclassifiable that its universe does not demode?
Nathalie / Certainly. His stories are timeless. They could go both in the 16th century and in the XXIIIth.
Mélanie / We have all known these atmospheres of family, house, atavism. Chabrol’s films have something universal.

Here is the criticism of First Published when it was released: many Chabrol films stage doubles: Micheline and Michèle take over variants of the same first name and the same fate here. François determines himself far from the double negative that his father sends back to him. The flower of wrong takes its source during the occupation, the favorite period of the filmmaker (The blood of others, a woman’s business, Vichy’s eye) And shows a bourgeois family worthy of the atrides – we embrace it to better choke or stifle all social mobility – a perpetual present, guilt that reproduces identically. Having the particularity of starting from his characters rather than his intrigues, Chabrol crunches an ignominious (the rooster) as always provided with a beautiful vitality, and a Marie-Chantal in electoral tour in the HLM of France from below, Pretext for tasty cynical dialogues. But the rest – the love of young people and the unpired fault of Aunt Line – is dragged like an arthritic turtle or a television electoral evening. Or is not completely treated, if not during a sudden outcome. As if, by dint of wanting to muddle the tracks, Chabrol ended up at the bottom by spinning none.

Trailer:

Claude Chabrol: Critical portrait of a French bourgeoisie