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和諧家庭背後，總有不可告人的秘密關係…
愛私慾．殺無痕

豪門孽殺
The Flower of Evil
(La fleur du mal)

伊力盧馬殿堂級拍檔哥羅迪查布洛力作
香港國際電影節好評激賞

故事大綱

《豪門孽殺》以一具屍首揭開序幕，再倒敘這宗謀殺案的因由──這個家庭過去為取得商業利益，與納粹黨有著不見得光的合作，當中還涉及昔日的謀殺指控。

家中母親打算再次參與地方政府選舉，卻遭到丈夫反對，更聲言或會寄出匿名信揭露其陰謀。他的兒子留學美國多年後返回法國，並重新與繼姊建立關係。與此同時，年邁的姑母儀態優雅地在家中苦心經營……

《豪門孽殺》一如導演哥羅迪查布洛風格的家庭驚慄片，揭示整個家庭的長處與弱點，表達出家庭寫照之餘，揭露各人的過去及競選中的醜陋行為，加強張力。強勁的演員陣容使電影更富現實感，例如飾演政客的娜塔莉比爾；資深演員蘇珊妮芙隆飾演姑母，表現動人，理所當然是所有事件的關鍵人物。

導演──哥羅迪查布洛簡介

多產的哥羅迪查布洛，專門執導犯罪個案，並於90年代製作有關維希政府的紀錄片。是次這齣心理及政治劇情片雖以現代社會作背景，則重回40年代。

哥羅迪查布洛1930年生於巴黎，在巴黎大學文理學院修讀文學，曾於57年與伊力盧馬合著一本評論希治閣的書。1957年首次執導長片《英俊的沙治》，成為法國新浪潮重要成員。除了冒險和心理劇情片外，他亦經常拍攝驚悚片。他的作品包括：《英俊的沙治》、《表兄弟》、《欲網》、《好女孩》、《風流薄倖人》、《冷血殺手》、《一箭雙雕》、《屠夫》、《血婚》、《凶卜》、《醋雞探長》、《謊言的顏色》、《忘情朱古力》、《之華》等。

導演的話

我的電影一直有年青的角色，不過都是份量較輕的二等配角，而現在對於刻劃年輕人處身滿載往日負擔的古舊環境中的故事，則愈來愈感覺有趣……多年前，曾在波爾多附近拍攝《Doctor Popaul》一片，選擇回去攝製新作是因為我要講述一個家族的故事，而歷史悠久的大家族在那裏並不罕見。此外，妮娜姑母的父親──皮亞查平的角色，須即刻使觀眾聯想起近來新聞不絕的當地顯貴。

時間是以樓梯的意像在影片中顯現，靜止的實體，所像徵的概念卻是流動不息的。

由蘇珊妮芙隆飾演妮娜姑母，她能夠為這個像少許話般的女家長增添一定的魔幻氣質。另外，她也具有膽怯的一面，但很懂得加以運用。

妮娜姑母是一隻會吼叫的老鼠，用意歹毒的小冊子可算是陰謀/情節的催化劑，不過，坦白說，其實影片中並沒有甚麼陰謀/情節，縱使有的話，亦會被時間完全稀釋掉了。

家族的溫室是重要場景，我要把它拍得像個熱帶雨林，有股令人窒息的封閉感，裏面的人物，或者花卉……

導演：哥羅迪查布洛
主演：娜塔莉比爾、蘇珊妮芙隆、皮亞查平
片長： 104分鐘
級數： IIB
戲院：待定

9月29日揭私怨

THE FLOWER OF EVIL (la Fleur du mal)

HK Releasing Date: September 29, 2005

Synopsis

If time exists, can guilt be handed down from one generation to the next, like certain illnesses? What effects can an unabsolved fault have on the guilty person and on his or her descendants and family? At the end of World War Two, in the noxious post-Occupation climate when all kinds of scores were being settled, a woman was acquitted of the crime that she committed. The story unfolds today, with another crime committed during a recent round of municipal elections. Who is guilty? The person who commits the crime or the one who takes the blame? And guilty of what?

And what if time didn't exist….

Extract from "Qui est criminelle?"

BY CAROLINE ELIACHEFF

La Fleur du Mal (The Flower of Evil) deals with the transmission of repetition in today's provincial bourgeoisie. The basic idea behind the screenplay was the following: telling the story of a woman acquitted for a crime that she committed and who then accuses herself of a crime that she didn't commit.

The film deals with the survivors of three generations of the Charpin-Vasseur family, members of the Bordeaux bourgeoisie. First generation: Miceline Charpin, known as Aunt Line (Suzanne Flon). Second generation: Anne Charpin-Vasseur, Aunt Line's niece (Nathalie Baye) and her husband Gerard Vasseur (Bernard Le Coq). Third generation: Michele Charpin-Vasseur (Melanie Doutey), daughter of Anne and her first husband who died in 1981, and Francois Vasseur (Benoit Magimel), son of Gerard Vasseur and Nathalie, who died at the same time as Michele's father. (…)

Three generations but also three different settings: the unchanging family homes, the scenes of the election campaign (low-rent housing blocks, the campaign HQ, the town hall) and the pharmacy-medical lab, the realm of Gerard Vasseur. The action, which takes place in concentric circles, takes the characters to these different settings, yet they always return to the family home.

Three generations, three different settings, three trails to create the suspense: the election campaign is a fake form of suspense but it moves the action along. I don't think that the audience ever doubts in Anne's foregone victory but we move slowly towards the election day. A denouement like any other.

Finding out who wrote the malicious pamphlet is much more compelling. The right-wing candidate or Anne's husband? This suspense is also a red herring because the problem isn't so much finding out whether her husband wrote it as the fact that whole family considers him capable of doing so.

The crime that launches the third part of the film can only be foreseen by those who have watched the opening closely: during that scene, we wee a murdered man. But now, the audience witnesses the murder. It knows who the victim is, who did the killing and why. It's hard to imagine an outcome in which the charming Michele will not be unmasked. And yet the traditional workings of the thriller (Who is the killer? Why? Will he be found out?) are totally undermined. (…)

But, through this highly singular story, Claude Chabrol's direction says something about the bourgeoisie that finds its concrete expression in the words: <<Time doesn't exist. Life is one perpetural present.>>

Because the characters are good-looking, pleasant and interesting, the view of the bourgeoisie is all the more pitiless. (…) The characters are frighteningly normal. Without the crime, perhaps there would be nothing to relate since nothing changes. But even the crime itself is used to show that nothing changes. Ever. (…) << Are not the best criteria for an authentic work,>> Claude Chabrol wrote in 1955, << often its total unawareness and perfect necessity?>>

The family home

During the opening titles, to the sound of Damia singing "Un Souvenir", we enter a large bourgeois home. The hallway indicates prosperity but there's also an old-fashioned air about the furniture and the décor as was frequent at the end of the war. We then see the same house, years later, virtually unchanged except for a few minor details. We are in a small town of the Bordeaux region in the home of the Charpin-Vasseur family…

<<I shot Docteur Popaul near Bordeaux… I chose to return there because I wanted to tell the story of a family and self-perpetuating families are quite common around there. Moreover, Aunt Line's father, Pierre Charpin, had to provide and instant reminder of a dignitary from the region who has been very much in the news recently.>>

Claude Chabrol

<<Claude Chabrol asked us to find a house with a very specific lay-out: a central hallway and a large staircase, like in La Ceremonie, with a dining room to the left of it and, to the right, a living room and another room that could become the conservatory. The staircase is always a very important element in Claude's films… >>

Yvon Crenn, production manager

<<Time is symbolized in the film by the staircase. It is stationary and present while the idea that it represents is one of motion.>>

Claude Chabrol

<<Where the décor of the house was concerned, the difficulty lay in working on the two periods, on the idea that time passes and that nothing changes. For the sequences that were supposedly set in 1944, furnishings paintings and fabrics are all fairly pretentious, denoting wealth and social standing, and yet also a little faded. In changing periods, we have more refined and elegant style, typical of today's provincial bourgeoisie. But, all in all, there's very little change… We can imagine Anne Charpin-Vasseur imposing her taste in certain rooms on her arrival but the house remains Aunt Line's…>>

Francoise Benoit-Fresco, set designer

AUNT LINE

The family home is the realm of Micheline Charpin, known as Aunt Line, who has lived there since she was a child. She is the daughter of Pierre Charpin, who held an important administrative post between 1940 and 1944. Over the years, and in tragic circumstances, she has lost her parents, her older brother, Francois, her sister, Marie-Jeanne, and her brother-in-law. A very active and dynamic woman, open to modern ideas, she nonetheless has a past heavy with memories and secrets. This past haunts her but she retains an appearance of great serenity all the same. She feels close to Francois, who reminds her of her late brother, and to Michele, a determined young woman who resembles her a great deal. She heartily encourages their budding relationship.

<<I felt that Suzanne could bring a certain magic to this role of slightly 'mythical' woman, the family elder. Moreover, she has a 'mousy' side to her that she uses admirably, but she's a 'mouse' that roars…>>

Claude Chabrol

<<If the bourgeoisie changed, over three generations, that would be obvious. And yet these characters have only the appearance of change: they reproduce, they are of different ages, but they are the same in every generation… >>

Caroline Eliacheff

The Town Hall

A former bourgeois residence that tis now the Town Hall is the setting for "social" and institutional life. People drink to the health of the incumbent mayor at a reception and go there on voting day to do their duty as voters, all together, as if attending mass.

<<The simple fact of voting is a citizen's duty but, in this social milieu, it has a slightly ridiculous side and it was interesting to highlight that>>

Claude Chabrol

<<We had a lot of fun making the electoral posters for the candidates in this campaign. They all had to have a fairly typecase, outdated air about them…>>

Francoise Benoit-Fresco

<<Often, in this context, politicians, even on the left-wing, are right-wing…>>

Claude Chabrol

ANNE CHARPIN-VASSEUR

Aunt Line's niece. Her parents died in an accident in 1958. Her first husband was a cousin, a Vasseur, and then she married Gerard, his brother, when her first husband died in an accident with her sister-in-law. Michele's mother and Francois' stepmother, she is in the middle of a campaign to get herself elected as the town's mayor. A fighter, highly active and very frank, she has "ambitions" and her husband continually reproaches her with this.

<< Anne Charpin-Vasseur is above all an upper-class woman with a well-established lifestyle who has launched a political career. Her intense activity prevents her from thinking too much and so allows her to flee reality. She stays on the move all the time to avoid falling. She has a very rigid side to her and appearances are fundamental for her. I had a lot of fun with the part, I've never played a character like this before…>>

Nathalie Baye

<<I gave Nathalie very few indication converning her performance. For her behaviour and way of dressing, I wanted her to take her inspiration from existing political figures…>>

Claude Chabrol

MATTHIEU LARTIGUE

Anne Charpin-Vasseur's running mate, devoted admirer and loyal adviser.

Faithful…

<<I see Matthieu as a sort of legal Machiavelli, Anne-Charpin Vasseur's devoted envoy to the lower classes. His capillary arrogance marks him out as a future leader. My three sources of inspiration are now all members of the government…>>

Thomas Chabrol

<<He's an up-and-coming politician and, on the set, he was more or less my whipping boy…>>

Claude Chabrol

The Pharmacy

This imposing establishment, clearly visible from the street, is the important pharmacy of an important provincial pharmacist. Refurbished, "like a Chicage drugstore", this is the realm of Gerard Vasseur. A medical lab has been installed there on the sly, in total illegality, and, above all, the boss uses the back of the shop for his afternoon appointments with young women.

<<The image of his office was essential in defining the character. This isn't really a place of work. As soon as the door opens, Claude wanted people to see the couch and realize that this is the thing that he uses the most… >>

Francoise Benoit-Fresco

GERARD VASSEUR

Anne's husband, the only Vasseur descendant, Gerard is the man of the house and very proud of it. He is furious at the idea of his wife running for election and never misses a chance to say so. His relationship with his son seems cordial enough but is actually very superficial. Francois hates his father, looking on him as "hypocritical, evil, deceitful and hedonistic…" There's even a possibility that he may not be his father.

<<Gerard is a womanizer, he enjoys living in his harem with all these women. He's the local Casanova if I can put it that way… >>

Bernard Le Coq

<<I see Gerard as a typical and highly commonplace example of someone who belongs to a certain milieu and who is unable to get himself accepted because of his intrinsic characteristics. He is the typical outsider brought into the fold. He is always slightly off the mark… Thanks to Bernard Le Coq's performance, he ends up becoming almost pathetic…>>

Claude Chabrol

The house at Pyla

A small house on the beach, near the dune at Pyla. This is the holiday home, a place symbolizing freedom and mermories… Nothing has really changed here and yet, at the same time, each family member has added something. Above all, it's Aunt Line's house, she is very much at home there.

<<In fact, we see very little of this house. What interested me here was the flashback or rather the non-flashback, the return to the past…>>

Claude Chabrol

<<In order to sleep together for the first time, the young couple isolates itself from the family but, nonetheless, continues the family tradition>>

Caroline Eliacheff

FRANCOIS VASSEUR

On returning form the USA where he has just spent a number of years, Francois discovers that the family situation has barely changed. As soon as he arrives, his father, Gerard, shows him round an Aunt Line serves him lamprey for lunch. But, above all, his feelings for Michele, his cousin and also his stepsister, that he left home to flee, are stronger than ever.

<<In Claude's films, I have the feeling that women often propel the action along and pull the strings. I wondered what Francois's active role was… In fact, I think that he's more of a victim that the others. At the same time, he highlights the unease that reigns in this family. He who has fled the apparent joie de vivre of all the other characters attempts to elude the phenomenon of repetition that one encounters so often in these upper class families…>>

Benoit Magimel

<<… and he ends up getting caught up in it… Indeed, the last line in the film is: 'Let's put on a brave front'>>

Claude Chabrol

MICHELE CHARPIN-VASSEUR

Daughter of Anne Charpin and Louis Vasseur, a student in psychology, she has always been in love with her cousin, Francois

<<There have always been young people in my films but in fairly secondary roles. I find it more and more interesting to tell stories of young people in an "old" milieu with all the burden of the past…>>

Claude Chabrol

The conservatory

The conservatory of the family home, Aunt Line's favourite room, is the setting for the film's key scene. The family has gathered there for the post-luncheon ritual of coffee. The silverware and china have been brought out. Matthieu Lartigue arrives with the pamphlet that has just been widely distributed around the town.

<<This malicioius pamphlet is, in a way, the catalyst for the plot, but, to tell the truth, in this film, there is no plot and, if there is one, it is completely diluted over time…>>

Claude Chabrol

<<According to Claude's requests, I filled the conservatory with plants but I also wanted add something to throw things into relief. I found a huge, old birdcage and he ended up using it for a shot that I feel is very important. Claude always uses what you bring him…>>

Francoise Benoit-Fresco

<<I wanted it to seem like a rainforest, a little stifling, with the characters like animals in this setting… or like flowers…>>

Claude Chabrol

The Pamphlet

<<This is a good one! Anne Charpin-Vasseur's at it again! Unfortunately for us, she's taken a liking to it! Ever since the Charpins and Vasseurs started intermarrying, they've stopped at nothing, the degenerate savages. In 1981, Charpin-Vasseur and his older brother's wife were killed in a mysterious car accident. Never mind, the widow married the widower. That way, she can compare the two animals…

An honourable family, honourable but jinxed! In 1958, it celebrated the advent of the Fifth Republic with a plane crash that killed our candidate's father and mother. They were simply known as Vasseur at the time. It was wiser to hide the name Charpin under the dung-heap where it belonged.

Pierre Charpin, the grandfather, indeed occupied an important administrative position between 1940 and 1944. Which wasn't to the liking of his son who decided to cut off all ties with his family and got himself killed as a resistance fighter a few days after the Normandy landings. That's what happends when you don't put all your eggs in one basket. A fine omelette! Pierre Charpin was murdered shortly after and in such strange conditions that one of his daughters, Micheline, was even suspected of committing the deed.

Her acquittal didn't convince anyone, no more than the official explanation of political revenge. Pierre Charpin's wife died, of a broken heart perhaps, a few weeks later. A bad year for the Charpins. And how harsh fate has been in fifty years! These people are very unlucky indeed! Well, let's hope that in two weeks, on voting day, Madame Anne Charpin-Vasseur, the Joan of Arc of flighty women, will uphold the family tradition and be soundly swept aside.>>

Director's biography

Claude CHABROL was born in Paris in 1930. Le studied literature at the Sorbonne. He has written a book on Alfred Hitchcock with Eric Rohmer in 1957. He directed his first feature, the nouvelle vague film Handsome Serge, in 1958. Besides adventure films and psychological dramas he has often returned to the genre of the thriller. Selected filmography: Handsome Serge [58], The Cousins[59], Web of Passion[59], The Good Girl[60], Landru[63], The Champage Murder[66], Girlfriends[68], The Butcher[70], Dr Popaul[72], Wedding in Blood[73], Death Rite[78], Inspector Lavardin[86], The Color of Lies[99], Nightcap[00], The Flower of Evil[03], etc.

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