Claude Chabrol’s forty-ninth feature stands as the crowning achievement of his prolific career—a coolly riveting study of class dynamics, the psychology of crime, and the sordid secrets lurking beneath the veneer of everyday life. A fascinatingly enigmatic, César Award–winning Isabelle Huppert is the chaotic yin to Sandrine Bonnaire’s tightly coiled yang. They are, respectively, a small-town postal worker and a maid to a wealthy family, a pair of outsiders who form a mysterious alliance that gradually, almost imperceptibly, goes haywire. With a master’s control of sound, editing, and suspense, Chabrol constructs a tour de force of sustained tension that delivers each brilliant shock with ice-pick precision. DVD SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES • New digital restoration • Selected-scene commentary featuring Claude Chabrol • New introduction by filmmaker Bong Joon Ho • Making-of program • Archival interviews with Chabrol, actor Sandrine Bonnaire, and cowriter Caroline Eliacheff • Episode of the Criterion Channel series Observations on Film Art about the use of offscreen sound • Trailer • New English subtitle translation • PLUS: An essay by crime-fiction and true-crime authority Sarah Weinman
