Movie Reviews for The Butcher

The Butcher

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Movie Reviews of The Butcher

Movie Review: Inevitably, Bad Things Happen
Summary: 4 Stars

Helene Daville (Stephane Audran) is the school mistress in Tremolat, a quiet village in the Perigord region of France. She's a confident, attractive woman who had a love affair ten years ago and who now has no desire to become enmeshed again. Popaul Thomas (Jean Yanne) is the village butcher. He spent 15 years in the army serving in Indochina and Algeria. He's seen things he doesn't care to talk about. At a wedding they meet and become friends. He is strongly attracted to her, and brings her presents of choice cuts of meat. She likes him, even cares for him in a way, but resists anything more intimate. Then young women are found butchered in the region.

This really isn't a mystery movie and it isn't a tedious psychological drama. The way in which these two people are drawn to each other is at once curious and intriguing. Is Helene a woman who will put herself in danger because she is able to feel so few other things? Is Popaul simply a man who wants more than he has or is he a serial murderer? If he is a murderer, on what levels is he guilty? How deep are the feelings and complexities within Helene as, at one point, she keeps hidden a piece of evidence that could point to the murderer?

I found the movie consistently involving but not one that had me either guessing or emotionally engaged. Audran and Yanne both give outstanding performances. Audran's character seems cool and in control, but she unexpectedly shows deeper feelings, especially when she is dealing with the students in her charge. Yanne looks a little like 80 per cent Mel Gibson and 20 per cent Andy Kaufman. Popaul comes across as an entirely competent man, able to handle whatever might come his way. But at the same time there is a wounded vulnerability about him that can create uneasy feelings. And for old car fans, Helene Daville drives a Citroen 2CV, a model no longer made. It was the French equivalent of the old VW, cheap to buy, reliable, and easy to fix if anything went wrong. It's so ugly a car it has great style.

I thought the movie was involving and well worth watching. The DVD transfer, while not bad, could have used some work.

Movie Review: One of Chabrol's best - just don't expect a thriller
Summary: 4 Stars

Le Boucher/The Butcher is one that falls into the love it or hate it camp. Certainly by modern standards, Claude Chabrol makes little of his premise - smalltown schoolteacher Stephane Audran falls for smalltown butcher and serial killer Jean Yanne - either as a suspense vehicle or moral drama. There are occasional hints of something deeper in the butcher's descriptions of the atrocities he saw in Algeria and IndoChina and which he has brought home with him to the outwardly idyllic backwater and scene of his unhappy childhood, but they're just left for the audience to make the connections. As usual, Chabrol is more interested in milieu than the crimes themselves, and his sense of place and community is impeccable without being forced, as his direction. Although the script is fairly thin, it perfectly captures the way comparative isolation and lack of diversion brings people into each other's spheres more than burning passion (in fact, Yanne reveals that its her ability to calm his passions that makes her so special to him). And it's telling that the two characters never have a romance: they don't even share a kiss. It's more akin to a drawn-out old-fashioned courtship - it's just that one of them happens to be a serial killer.

One thing that is particularly striking is that way he is able to use long, unshowy takes (some lasting several minutes) simply because his actors are up to the challenge, giving the film an unforced, natural flow. There's imagination and striking imagery when required - the film's most tense moment takes place during a fade to black, while a night time drive takes on a disembodied quality - but he's not out to batter his audience with technique. Quietly impressive, but you may need to have lived in a small town to get the most out of it.

The Pathfinder NTSC DVD offers an acceptable but far from outstanding standards conversion transfer. Arrow's UK PAL DVD does offer a better transfer in a slightly cropped widescreen ratio, but contains no extras.

Movie Review: whodunnit +
Summary: 4 Stars

I pretty much guessed the killer's identity early on, which Chabrol makes it easy to do (unlike his mentor Hitchcock), and then feared the worst as the movie drew to a close. But then I remembered that the beautiful and elegant Stephane Audran was his wife at the time and there's no way a man would do THAT to his own wife, unless he was prepared to sleep on the sofa for quite a while! So, that leaves only one possible ending because we can't have dudes like Popaul (whose name shows up in the subtitles as Paul!) and his switchblade running around loose. Also, Chabrol has the guy fall in love with Helene (Audran), which makes him realize his evil ways must end, one way or another -- if only he'd met her sooner, eh?

I suppose the point here is that society needs to be careful about putting guns and other deadly objects into the hands of people in authority in the first place -- a concern of our own Founding Fathers as well, who were doubtful of the need to establish a standing army. Quite so. Popaul is a veteran of two messy wars France got involved in after WWII (Algeria and Indochina) and knows all about killing first hand, literally. His return to civilian life as a butcher, his father's trade, seems not to have taken care of the bloodlust and indifference to death and suffering that soldiers often feel (if they feel anything at all after combat) and have a hard time overcoming. Maybe the French army should have done a better job of counseling vets after they muster out, a lesson we also learned from Vietnam. War is hell on the vets too.

Movie Review: Suspenseful
Summary: 4 Stars

This is the second Claude Chabrol-directed movie that I have seen. I wrote somewhat critically of the first one I saw, "Le Ceremonie", because of the many suggestions that I read about Chabrol being the "French Hitchcock". I did not feel "Le Ceremonie" was a suspenseful movie. I DO think that "Le Boucher" is suspenseful and there is a point in the movie where it is truly suspenseful. I felt that I got my money's worth with "Le Boucher" but, oddly enough, I came to see this film as more an influence of John Ford than Alfred Hitchcock. The extensive wedding scene that the film opens with, the elaborate dancing scene, the journey, all made me think of the standard elements of of a John Ford movie. I found myself reflecting on that as I was watching "Le Boucher" while still looking for a Hitchcock connection. Whether it's Ford, Hitchcock or, more appropriately, Chabrol that you're looking for, "Le Boucher" is a quality movie. It's a good example of Chabrol's quality as a director. I've found, after seeing two of his movies, that his specialty seems to be relationships and this movie definitely examines a relationship that gets rather strange.