One of Claude Chabrol’s warmest, most elegantly ambiguous films, The Butcher seamlessly blends actors and locals in the provincial village of Trémolat. A wedding and the bride’s funeral are two key fictional events largely attended by villagers, while the lead actors, in character, weave in and out of the workday world of the village.
Popaul, like his father, is the village butcher. At the wedding he meets Hélène, a poised, middle-class schoolteacher, with whom he falls secretly in love while respecting her withdrawal from sex and romance following a disastrous breakup. A serial killer is on the loose targeting women. By one of the corpses, while picnicking with her innocent young pupils, Hélène finds the cigarette lighter with which she gifted Popaul, or one just like it. While painting her flat, Popaul discovers the lighter inside a drawer; Hélène has not turned it over to the police. Popaul “confesses” to her that he is the killer before stabbing himself, bringing her to the point that she gives him a first and last kiss.
How one interprets this series of events probably depends on whether one believes that a mere butcher, upon finding the lighter and recalling Hélène’s nearly hysterical relief upon seeing it (after the murder) in his hand, could figure out what’s afoot in Hélène’s mind and how impossible their relationship therefore is. He is that intelligent. His confession is the lie he must tell to move Hélène’s heart towards him. Much of the exquisite ambiguity comes from the film’s veering towards Hélène’s subjective view and by keeping the murders hidden from view.
Both characters are related to humanity’s primitive past: Popaul, at war in Indochina; Hélène, by her enforced celibacy—a suppression of something essentially human.
Stéphane Audran and Jean Yanne are superb.
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LE BOUCHER (Claude Chabrol, 1969)
One of Claude Chabrol’s warmest, most elegantly ambiguous films, The Butcher seamlessly blends actors and locals in the provincial village of Trémolat. A wedding and the bride’s funeral are two key fictional events largely attended by villagers, while the lead actors, in character, weave in and out of the workday world of the village.
Popaul, like his father, is the village butcher. At the wedding he meets Hélène, a poised, middle-class schoolteacher, with whom he falls secretly in love while respecting her withdrawal from sex and romance following a disastrous breakup. A serial killer is on the loose targeting women. By one of the corpses, while picnicking with her innocent young pupils, Hélène finds the cigarette lighter with which she gifted Popaul, or one just like it. While painting her flat, Popaul discovers the lighter inside a drawer; Hélène has not turned it over to the police. Popaul “confesses” to her that he is the killer before stabbing himself, bringing her to the point that she gives him a first and last kiss.
How one interprets this series of events probably depends on whether one believes that a mere butcher, upon finding the lighter and recalling Hélène’s nearly hysterical relief upon seeing it (after the murder) in his hand, could figure out what’s afoot in Hélène’s mind and how impossible their relationship therefore is. He is that intelligent. His confession is the lie he must tell to move Hélène’s heart towards him. Much of the exquisite ambiguity comes from the film’s veering towards Hélène’s subjective view and by keeping the murders hidden from view.
Both characters are related to humanity’s primitive past: Popaul, at war in Indochina; Hélène, by her enforced celibacy—a suppression of something essentially human.
Stéphane Audran and Jean Yanne are superb.
Tags: Chabrol/Grunes
This entry was posted on December 15, 2007 at 9:01 am and is filed under Formal Capsule Film Comments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.