Ophélia (1963)

Ophélia is a French film first released in 1963, directed by Claude Chabrol.  The film stars Alida Valli, Claude Cerval, André Jocelyn, Juliette Mayniel and Robert Burnier.  Our overall rating for this film is: good.


Yvan Lesurf is having difficulty coming to terms with his mother Claudia’s marriage to Adrien, his father’s brother, barely a few months after his father’s death.  Yvan has grown to loathe his uncle but is at a loss what to do, so he wanders aimlessly in the grounds of his house.  Claudia understands her son’s disquietude and tries to assuage her husband’s anger.  One day, André Lagrange, a friend of the family, voices his objection to Yvan’s attempts to seduce his daughter Lucie.  Having seen Olivier’s Hamlet at the local cinema, Yvan is struck by the similarities between Shakespeares’s play and his own situation.  This soon turns into a morbid obsession and Yvan even believes he is Hamlet and starts to call Lucie Ophélia.   Meeting his friend François at a café, Yvan explains that his mother and his uncle are Gertrude and Claudius, Hamlet’s mother and stepfather.  It is they who killed his father!  To expose this crime, Yvan persuades his friend to help him make a short film...
© Willems Henri (Brussels, Belgium)

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