Les Liens du sang (1978) - film review

One night, a teenage girl, Patricia, rushes into a police station, bloodstained and panic-stricken, claiming that her cousin, Muriel, has just been raped and killed.   Inspector Carella takes charge of the investigation and begins by rounding up the known sex offenders in the area that match Patricia’s description of the killer – a man with dark hair and blue eyes.  Just when Carella discovers that Muriel’s middle-aged employer fits this description, Patricia reveals that the murderer was in fact her brother Patrick.  Carella isn’t convinced but then he comes across the dead girl’s diary, which contains the key to the mystery.  From what he reads in the secret journal, Carella discovers that Patrick and Muriel were far more than just cousins…

For anyone who is familiar with the work of French director Claude Chabrol, Blood Relatives will come as something of a surprise, as it is quite unlike the films for which he is best known.   Although the film’s subject is recognisably Chabrol-esque – a crime drama which cynically subverts the norms of comfortable middleclass life  – stylistically, it’s altogether the work of a different director.  For one thing, there’s a cold realism which gives parts of the film a striking documentary feel, something which the Canada setting (a one-off for Chabrol) reinforces.  Also, the film’s treatment of sex and eroticism is unrecognisably the work of this director.  In contrast to the subtle, sophisticated sexual references of Chabrol’s other thrillers, what we see here is a graphic portrayal of sex that is twisted, sleazy and brutal – a sickening concoction of incest, paedophilia and rape.  With its gruesome knife slash sequence and dark Freudian undertones, the film is as close as Chabrol got to making a psychosexual thriller.  Whilst the film may nor be the best example of its kind, it is strangely compelling (in spite of the pretty wooden acting from most of the supporting cast) and it stands as one of Claude Chabrol’s most disturbing films.

© James Travers 2007

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