Chabrol develops the situation with sly restraint, while Eduardo Serra's cinematography generates a palpable sense of provincial menace.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 17, 2012

A prickly, twisted, mean-spirited, borderline crazy and highly seductive picture.

| May 17, 2012

This 2004 French feature seems concerned not so much with the psychopathology of everyday life as with psychopaths who lurk behind the everyday.

| May 17, 2012

Chabrol's film stands as a reminder of the madness that lurks in plain sight.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 14, 2006

Chabrol arranges his story with a subtle, almost clinical accumulation. And it takes close attention to the movie's seemingly innocuous details to understand his deeper purposes.

| Nov 16, 2006

Entering his sixth decade, Chabrol remains a master inspector of the criminal heart of the French bourgeoisie.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 10, 2006

A superbly unsettling crime drama about a seemingly ordinary family, ravaged by passions that descend on them like a plague.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 9, 2006

At age 76 with 54 films to his credit, Chabrol can do little wrong and pretty much whatever he likes.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 27, 2006

The film reveals its secrets slowly, and Chabrol tightens the screws not according to the rules of Hollywood suspense but with a cool, level gaze.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 22, 2006

A merrily macabre things-we-do- for-love yarn.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 15, 2006

It uses the extraordinary craft Chabrol has acquired over the decades to insinuate itself inside our psyches in unexpected and potent ways.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 8, 2006

Claude Chabrol has a wonderful way of making audiences nervous.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 12, 2006

If The Bridesmaid is middle-drawer Chabrol, it's almost worth going to just to watch Laura Smet, a vamp of not-so-basic instinct.

| Original Score: B | Aug 9, 2006

Certainly, The Bridesmaid is the most compelling film I have seen this year since Jean-Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows.

| Aug 9, 2006

In The Bridesmaid, the latest of his works to be released in the United States, Mr. Chabrol again takes up a sharp instrument and directs it at one of his favorite targets, the family.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 4, 2006

Now well into his 70s, Claude Chabrol -- the French Hitchcock -- continues to turn out enjoyable thrillers about skeletons in bourgeois closets.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 4, 2006

Smet, the 22-year-old daughter of Nathalie Baye and French musician Johnny Hallyday, has a hauntingly beautiful face and carries Senta's enigmatic nature well.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 4, 2006

Like Hitchcock or Clouzot, Chabrol excels at building a sense of dread.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 3, 2006

... a psychodrama of typically brisk efficiency and relaxed gallows humor.

Full Review | Aug 2, 2006

Chabrol's scrutiny of human behavior is remarkable for its laidback intensity and absence of finger-wagging.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 13, 2006