The Flower of Evil
If ''The Flower of Evil'' is not vintage Claude Chabrol, it's at least vintage mediocre Claude Chabrol. His umpteenth bourgeois housebound suspicion-fest is one of his more inexplicable adventures in secrets and scandal. In last year's ''Merci Pour le Chocolat,'' Chabrol gave us a helping of a demented Isabelle Huppert wreaking comic horrors on her bewildered loved ones. And it was the same director who gave us mannered and witty morsels such as ''La Femme Infidele'' (1969), ''Violette Noziere'' (1978), and ''La Ceremonie'' (1995), in which mysteries thrived and murder was in the offing. In ''Flower of Evil,'' murder remains evergreen, but the fruit lacks juice.
The setting this time is a stately chateau in Bordeaux, crammed with three generations of close-knit aristocrats tied by law and blood but eventually divided by temperament. The patriarch is a stern businessman named Gerard Vasseur (Bernard Lecoq), who's taken Anne Charpin (Nathalie Baye), a whirlwind of a woman, as his second wife. When we meet Gerard he's on the floor, dead. The camera snoops around, following the apparent scent of intrigue.
How he got there has to wait, while the film flashes back to the arrival of Gerard's handsome son Francois (Benoit Magimel), who took off for Chicago four years previously to study law. His return overlaps with his stepmother's run for local office (on the dime of her disapproving hubby) and offers an opportunity to renew his awkward relationship with his stepsister Michele (Melanie Doutey). In a development that seems wholly appropriate in a Chabrol picture, Michele is a flirt and a psych major, so her ability to get in Francois's pants is tantamount to her unzipping his head. And no one in the house bats an eyelash at the relationship or their retreat to a summer cottage for its consummation.
As if that weren't enough, someone in town has sent a nasty note accusing the family of everything from consorting with the Nazis to being plain mean. When everyone gathers for the reading of the letter, the camera trains mostly on Auntie Line (Suzanne Flon), whose face barely masks the worry that the letter's accusations might be true. Flon, with her drill sergeant's march and preference for barking her lines, suggests a richer movie lurking beneath the surface of this one.
Soon, it's agreed that neither of our young lovers likes Gerard very much. He's a ''liar.'' He's ''evil,'' ''hypocritical,'' and ''duplicitous.'' We're never offered proof. But this is where a steady diet of Chabrol would assure us that Gerard must be bad because his accusers say so. If their contempt were insufficient, Auntie Line is on hand to corroborate their contempt, which really is just another way for the director to say he doesn't like Gerard either. As usual, Chabrol manages to get us worked up over these people, but any further investment is hard to justify.
The whole of ''Flower of Evil'' seems to exist for Eduardo Serra's photography, especially at night. Where elsewhere it's mischievous and insinuating, come nightfall the camera is sexy and alluring. Serra probably used some camera trick to achieve the effect, although I could be wrong. But it's the only mystery in Chabrol's movie worth serious consideration.
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