Au coeur du mensonge (1999) - film review

When a young girl is raped and murdered in a tightly knit Brittany community, suspicion falls immediately on a once-famous artist, René Sterne, who has fallen on hard times.   The only person who appears to believe in René’s innocence is his wife, Vivianne, the local doctor.   But when a popular writer Germain-Roland Desmot arrives on the scene, things become even more complicated.   Even René ends up questioning his sanity...

Au coeur du mensonge is an unsettling psychological thriller from the widely recognised master of the genre, Claude Chabrol.   Whilst not the director’s best work, it is one of his most typical, bringing together the familiar Chabrolesque themes of a fragile marriage, a complacent middle class community, horrific death, a lurking menace - and destructive suspicions.   Like Chabrol’s 1987 film Masques , it explores the psychology of lying through some odd-ball characters who appear to lead a bizarre double life.   This schizoid characterisation is complemented by the constantly shifting face of the Brittany setting – one minute stunningly beautiful, the next dark and oppressive.

Although a competently realised and atmospheric thriller, the film is less satisfying than many of Chabrol’s other works.  After a promising start, the film soon loses momentum and drifts lazily towards a somewhat uninspired conclusion.  It is also hampered by some stilted dialogue and unconvincing acting (most notably from Antoine de Caunes and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi).   Fortunately, this is just about made up for by the film’s eerie cinematography and Jacques Gamblin’s alternately poignant and disturbing portrayal of a slightly unhinged, reclusive artist.

© James Travers 2002

For more on Claude Chabrol see:
The life of Claude Chabrol
Le Beau Serge
Les Cousins
Le Boucher
Que la bête meure
La Cérémonie




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