Jacques Dacqmine

Master director Alain Resnais ('Last Year in Marienbad') blurs the line between cinematic technique and theatrical artifice in his acclaimed 'Mélo', adapted from Henri Bernstein's classic play about a doomed love triangle in 1920s Paris. Pierre (Pierre Arditi, 'Love Unto Death') and Marcel (André Dussollier, 'A Good Marriage') are both celebrated concert violinists and lifelong friends, in spite of their differing temperaments. Pierre is modest, sensitive and content with his lot; Marcel is hungry, driven, and pursues a solo career that takes him to the four corners of the world. After years apart, the two friends reunite when Pierre invites Marcel to his home for dinner. It is then that Marcel first meets Pierre's wife Romaine (Sabine Azéma, 'Cosmos'), sparking a passionate affair that can only end in tragedy before the curtain falls.

Chabrol forges onto his signature terrain of the psychological thriller with his third film, a lurid and disturbing melodrama of infidelity, obsession and murder at a vineyard in rural Provence featuring Jean-Paul Belmondo. This alluring whodunit echoes both Alfred Hitchcock's most personal and obsessive films and Douglas Sirk's colorful 50's melodramas. French with English subtitles.