Un papillon sur l'épaule (1978)
Directed by Jacques Deray

Film Review

In the 1970s, the 'polar' or mystery thriller, was one of the mainstays of French cinema, and the most prolific director of the genre was Jacques Deray. Be it classic gangster films such as Borsalino (1970) or traditional policiers like Flic Story (1975), Deray brought panache, energy and intelligence to a popular genre that helped to ensure the polar never lost its audience-pulling potential. Based on The Velvet Well, a novel by John Gearon, Un papillon sur l'épaule is one of the more unusual and sophisticated of Deray's thrillers, a Kafkaesque scenario along the lines of a neo-polar, where the threat comes not from gun-toting hoodlums but mysterious shadowy figures who appear to be pulling the strings from a distance and whose identity we can only guess at.

Deray's films almost invariably featured an iconic actor (usually Alain Delon or Jean-Paul Belmondo) in the lead role, and this one is no exception. As the hero who is led a merry dance by an unseen adversary Lino Ventura is an excellent casting choice, bringing depth and authenticity to a part that could so easily have looked like a cardboard cut out. Ventura is an actor we can instantly engage and throughout the film we can feel his character's growing frustration and derangement as he is drawn deeper and deeper into a labyrinth of intrigue.

With a script provided by Jean-Claude Carrière (a frequent contributor to Luis Buñuel's later films, such as Belle de jour (1967) Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie (1972)) and a sterling cast at his disposal (including Jean Bouise, an essential ingredient of any good neo-polar), Jacques Deray could hardly have failed to make this one of his stand-out films. The camerawork and lighting, helped by Claude Bolling's haunting score, create a palpable mood of entrapment which heightens the tension and the sense that Ventura is being led by invisible hands towards a gruesome end. Un papillon sur l'épaule isn't just one of the more stylish French thrillers of the 1970s, it is also one of the most disturbing - far more satisfying than Deray's subsequent Belmondo bashes Le Marginal (1983) and Le Solitaire (1987).

Film Synopsis

Arriving in Barcelona to meet up with his wife, Roland Fériaud checks into a hotel and is surprised to find a dead man in the room next to his.   The next thing he knows is regaining consciousness in a deserted rest home, attended by a doctor who asks him a series of bizarre questions.  Returning to the hotel, Fériaud meets the wife of the dead man; she gives him the key to a left luggage locker, just before she too is killed, in a road accident.  When his wife is kidnapped, the now totally perplexed Fériaud receives instructions from a mysterious telephone caller to hand over a briefcase...