La Maison assassinée (1988) - film review

After World War I, a young ex-soldier, Sébastien Monge, returns to his home village.  Ignorant of his past, he learns that, 24 years before, his entire family was slain in their home one stormy night.  Only Sébastien, then a four-month old baby, was spared.  Three immigrant workers were charged with the killings and executed, even though it later transpired that they were innocent.   Sébastien Monge vents his anger by demolishing his family house by hand.  As he does so, he discovers a small casket containing money and three credit notes, each signed by a prominent member of the village community.  Realising that these three must be the men who killed his family, Sébastien decides to take his revenge by killing them in turn.  He begins with the wealthy Gaspard Dupin, who lives in a grand house with his nymphomaniac daughter Charmaine and his son Patrice, a war veteran who was disfigured during active service.  Whilst Sébastien is being seduced by Charmaine, Dupin is killed by someone else.   Sébastien’s next victim, the miller Didon Pujol, is also murdered before he has a chance to take his revenge.  Sébastien realises that someone is watching his every move and is going to extraordinary lengths to protect him.  But who, and why..?

Best known for his popular thrillers and comedies of the 1960s and 1970s, Georges Lautner also made a few unconventional films which are often the best examples of his work.   La Maison assassinée is one such film, a rural whodunit of the kind which is comparatively rare in French cinema (the most famous example is probably Christian-Jaque’s 1941 film L’Assassinat du Père Noël).  Whilst this is not Lautner’s best film, it has many strengths – good acting, a good script, good location photography – and as a suspense thriller it works rather well.

Now better known as a popular singer, Patrick Bruel also has a respectable career as an actor and in this film he turns in a fairly convincing performance.  Most of the cast were stage actors with few, if any, film credits at the time, although some went on to become well-known faces in cinema – notably Anne Brochet.  The one actor who stands out is Yann Collette, whose portrayal of a disfigured World War I veteran is rather poignant.  By contrast, Ingrid Held’s performance as a “Sex in the City”-style nymphomaniac is too modern, too excessive for this kind of historical drama, and her contribution is to the detriment of the film’s period atmosphere.

Like all good detective fiction, this is a film which demands a great deal of effort from its audience if its very complicated plot is to make any sense.  Murder mysteries invariably contain a number of red herrings, but here there are enough herrings to keep a fishmonger’s in business for a year.  This isn’t a problem if you can stay awake, although some supernatural elements in the latter part of the film were probably a mistake and weaken the film’s credibility.

Overall, La Maison assassinée is a pretty respectable variant on the mystery-thriller film.  It succeeds in capturing the mood of a rural community after the First World War, it tells an intriguing story rather well, and it makes a pleasant change from contemporary urban thrillers.  In the twilight if his filmmaking career, Georges Lautner still manages to pull a few pleasant surprises.

© James Travers 2005

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