Beautifully simple in construction, the fiftieth (or so) film in the forty-year career of Claude Chabrol allots its first fifteen minutes to the smooth operation of a time-tested scam. We are placed in the situation without benefit of rehearsal, but we soon see where it is headed. We follow along. We learn how it's supposed to go: like clockwork. And though their relationship is at first ambiguous, and unsurprising when later clarified, we get to know the partners in crime, a mature vamp (Isabelle Huppert, with a wardrobe of wigs) and a much older man (Michel Serrault, with a bump on his nose), travelling companions in a mobile home on the road between gigs. Then, for most of the rest of the way, we watch a deviation from the perfect form, a wandering solo improvisation by the woman without the input and support of her teammate, a higher-stakes con game that takes our players out of their "league" (five million in Swiss francs in an armored briefcase) and ultimately into the ballpark of an emotionally unstable mobster with a weakness for Italian opera and a catch in his throat when talking of the lives he has snuffed. We don't know where we're going in this second scam (nor, always, do the scammers themselves), and the uncertainty works wonders for such basic ingredients of the genre as suspense and mystery. The two-part narrative structure -- first convention, then deviation -- amounts to a virtual synopsis, a virtual history, of genre fiction. In addition to a recipe for freshness. Chabrol's direction remains calm and unflashy throughout, letting the course of events speak for itself, and permitting no stylistic jostles or jiggles to spoil the cleanness of the line. (1997) — Duncan Shepherd
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