Mord-Skizzen

Alain Jessua was almost an accursed director,whose best works were largely ignored ,with the eventual exception of "Traitement de Choc" (1972 ) more because Alain Delon and Annie Girardot appeared completely naked ,than for its merits which were real .All that he made till his grotesque "Frankestein 90" is worth a look ,if you want to go off the beaten track of the French cinema.

After the failure of "Frankenstein 90" which won awards abroad but got unanimous thumbs down in its native country ,Jessua relinquished the fantasy and horror genre;"En Toute Innocence" is no longer a Jessua Movie;it's Jessua trying to imitate Claude Chabrol,complete with gastronomy :Cook Clemence (Suzanne Flon) makes tasty little dishes for her boss (Michele Serrault).But this wealthy architect is cross cause his daughter-in-law (Nathalie Baye) has a lover.After a car accident,his legs are paralyzed .His hate knows no bounds now.He plans his revenge on the unfaithful wife.

Very derivative.Stick to Jessua's heyday:1972-1981,his golden decade.

We deal here with a good script although being really classical too. Adapted from an André Lay's novel, very close to the book, line to line, a sort of Boileau Narcejac style. Good performances too. André Lay was a sort of poor man's French James Hadley Chase, a very prolific writer who, in actual life, was a butcher in the morning, on street markets, and novelist on the afternoons. He wrote mostly this kind of schemes, in the line of POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE, the wife, husband and lover triangle scheme, but also crime adventure stories, in the jungle, desert or mountain, involving adventurers, gangsters, runaway inmates. For instance, THEY CAME TO ROB LAS VEGAS was adapted from him. so, back to this film, you can watch it with great pleasure. The trade mark with André Lay was the twist and ironical endings. Always.

"En Toute Innocence" (1988) is a bourgeois thriller very much in the Claude Chabrol tradition, even featuring actors that Chabrol also worked with (Michel Serrault, Nathalie Baye, both great), as well as impeccable cinematography by Chabrol regular Jean Rabier (it's mostly set around a scenic spot in Bordeaux). It's elegant, civilized (on the surface; it is a cat-and-mouse game with the possibility of planned murder, after all), sophisticated, if perhaps too measured in its pacing. It's not quite as good as "the real thing", but if you like this sort of movie, which really only the French can make, you'll probably like this one too. **1/2 out of 4.