L'Alliance (1971)
Directed by Christian de Chalonge

Film Review

Although it is little known today, L'Alliance is a film which is well worth seeing, a bizarre mix of black comedy and psychological thriller, which still appears surprisingly fresh and modern.  Its strident, eerie music and the creepy cinematography, coupled with some even creepier acting performances from Anna Karina and Jean-Claude Carrière, makes this a compelling drama in paranoia and obsession.

Christian de Chalonge somehow manages to sustain a Hitchcockian level of suspense right up until the last shot, constantly teasing the viewer but revealing the absolute minimum.  This is one of those films where the spectator has plenty of freedom to make his own interpretation and draw his own conclusions, making it an ambiguous yet extremely intelligent work of cinema.

Both the plot (taken from Carrière's own novel) and film's construction are breath-takingly original, allowing the film to develop a unique atmosphere which is both unsettling (certainly for anyone expecting a conventional film) and totally engrossing.  The film combines the banal with the frighteningly surreal to chilling effect.

Film Synopsis

Hugues's obsession for animals has led him to accumulate a vast collection of creatures of all kinds, which he studies with great interest.  His menagerie is now so large that he needs a vast living space in which to house it, so he resorts to using a marriage agency to help him find a wife with a suitably large apartment.  Jeanne appears to offer all that Hugues requires and so without delay he moves into her ample Parisian abode with his numerous specimens of exotic fauna.  At first, Hughes is puzzled by his wife's placid behaviour and he begins to wonder if she might be seeing another man.  Jeanne is equally mystified by her husband as he devotes himself to examining his animals, giving them far more attention that he ever offers to her.  Unbeknown to his wife, Hughes is working to confirm his theory that all animals have a higher level of perception that human beings do not possess, a sixth sense that places them in a stronger evolutionary position.  The couple's housekeeper, Hélène, becomes increasingly concerned by the strange behaviour of her employers and finally leaves them.  As the animals around them become frighteningly agitated Jeanne and Hughes surrender to a wild burst of passion, not knowing that within a few seconds humanity will cease to be...