Les Liens du sang (1978)
Directed by Claude Chabrol

Film Review

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.

Film Synopsis

Late one evening, a teenage girl bursts into a Montreal police station, covered in blood and in a state of obvious distress.  The girl identifies herself as Patricia Lowery and reports that her cousin, Muriel Stark, has just been raped and stabbed to death.  She describes the killer as being a man with dark hair and blue eyes.  Police Inspector Steve Carella begins his investigation by going after the sex offenders in the district whose description tallies with that offered by Patricia.  Can it be a coincidence that Muriel's employer fits the description of the killer?

Carella is taken by surprise when Patricia makes her second shock revelation - that the murderer is her brother Andrew, who was having an affair with Muriel before she died.  The inspector is sceptical at first but has reason to take the claim seriously when, on reading the dead girl's diary, he discovers some interesting facts about the murder victim.  It seems that Andrew and Muriel were more than just cousins.  But Carella's doubts remain and as Patricia persists with her accusations it soon becomes clear who the real killer is...