Claude Chabrol's reopening of a famous and infamous case of parricide in Paris of the 1930s -- a tantalizing blend of tabloid sensationalism, discreet social consciousness, mordant wit, and a kind of glamour that is within both the imagination and the budget of the average shopgirl. Chabrol's insights into the personalities in the case tend to be more unsettling than illuminating. The title character in particular is regarded as a figure more of modern mythology than of modern history -- a mysteriously withdrawn and irrational girl who leads a double life as a proper working-class schoolgirl and as a gaudily painted lady of the evening, and who thinks of the one life in terms of "pettiness" and the other in terms of "grandeur." (In her painted-lady guise, Isabelle Huppert is accorded some wonderful closeups in which her hatbrim, like Veronica Lake's front curl, slices off one of her eyes.) The movie begins to drag a bit as it follows the case dutifully through arrest, interrogation, trial, and ironic postscript; and at intervals all along the way there are some dreadful dream scenes, done in a smeary, hokey style, which provide a sort of relaxation from the classiness that otherwise prevails. (1978) — Duncan Shepherd
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