Isabelle Huppert and Michel Serrault star in "The Swindle," the new thriller from French director Claude Chabrol, which will be shown Oct. 8 and 12 at 7:15 p.m. in Willard Straight Theatre.
To welcome autumn to Ithaca, Cornell Cinema is presenting a sampling of French director Claude Chabrol's films this month, including his latest release, "The Swindle." All screenings are in Willard Straight Theatre.
Chabrol has been one of the most prolific filmmakers to emerge from the French New Wave, averaging a film each year since his career began in the late 1950s. Throughout his impressive career, Chabrol has created portraits of strong, passionate women who are searching for ways to escape their social and economic roles. Presented in October are a sampling of Chabrol's fascinating heroines, including two remarkable performances by Isabelle Huppert.
An attractive pair of aging Parisian con artists find themselves at cross purposes in "The Swindle," a stylish thriller starring Michel Serrault and Huppert. Though the film centers around themes of crime and depravity, Chabrol's characters, whose motivations, desires and failures emerge through the action, are the real focus of this clever gem. A critic from the Austin Chronicle writes, "The delightfully multi-layered performances of Huppert and Serrault lend it a perverse, Hitchcockian kind of charm that's anything but sweet and innocuous." The screening of "The Swindle" is made possible in part with the support of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy. "The Swindle" will be shown Friday, Oct. 8, at 7:15 p.m. and Oct. 12 at 7:15 p.m.
Nearly 40 years ago, Chabrol made "Les Bonnes Femmes," the second film showing in the series. The film tells the stories of four Parisian shop girls with bourgeois aspirations. Their efforts to break out of the monotony of their lives are explored with both compassion and irony in this visually beautiful classic. A critic at The Village Voice said of the film, "Deeply unsettling, the film manages a dialectic between the freewheeling and fatalistic unlike anything else in Chabrol's oeuvre." Cornell Cinema will present "Les Bonnes Femmes" Oct. 23 and 26, both at 7:15 p.m.
In the third film of the series, "La Cérémonie," Chabrol takes a dark look at the relationships between the classes. In the 1996 film, Sandrine Bonnaire plays a young, illiterate maid and Huppert, a feisty town postmistress who befriends her.
"La Cérémonie" is a classic tale of class antagonism that falls somewhere between "Thelma and Louise" and Genet's "The Maids." In Hitchcockian fashion, Chabrol creates an eerie thriller that expertly extends the suspense and implicates the spectator in the inevitable crime. "La Cérémonie" will be shown Oct. 30 at 10 p.m. and Nov. 2 at a time to be announced.
Admission to each of the three films is $4 for students, seniors and children 12 and under, and $4.50 for the general public.
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