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22 out of 24 people found the following comment useful :-
Chabrol's attack on the bourgeoisie disguised as a thriller, 14 May 2005
8/10
Author: debblyst from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

The plot: Charles (Jean-Claude Drouot) is a tentative writer with a drug problem who goes berserk and attacks his own wife Hélène (Stéphane Audran) and their baby boy in a rage fit (in yet another of those amazing Chabrol opening sequences!). Hélène files for divorce and custody of their child, but Charles' wealthy father Régnier (Michel Bouquet) is ready to fight dirty for the boy's custody: Régnier promises money and a job to shady Paul Thomas (Jean-Pierre Cassel) if he can find out nasty things about Hélène. As Paul tries hard but fails to find skeletons in Hélène's closet, he begins to scheme foul plans to do her in. But things go terribly wrong.

"La Rupture" (1970) is a study about misleading appearances and the destructive power of money and of social conventions. In the film, conventions play a very important part: Hélène used to be a stripper so people assume she's something of a whore, which she wasn't and isn't. Régnier is a rich and respectable bourgeois, but ready to play dirty to have things his own way. Paul is seductive, funny and good-looking, so everybody likes him -- even Hélène -- though he is rotten to the core.

The film belongs to a very rich period in Claude Chabrol's career, including "Les Biches" (1968), "Une Femme Infidèle" (1969) and "Le Boucher" (1970), all of them Hitchcockian in surface but much darker, more violent and tragic, rather closer to Fritz Lang in core, acid criticism and virulent spirit. These four films portray Chabrol's perennial (self)-criticism on the French bourgeoisie, while dealing with apparently "normal" characters going berserk (Jean-Claude Drouot here, Jacqueline Sassard in "Les Biches", Jean Yanne in "Le Boucher", Michel Bouquet in "Une Femme Infidèle"). They all star his then-wife, beautiful, fascinating Stéphane Audran, here in a terrific performance, whose detached acting style, world-weary heavy-lidded eyes, fabulous legs, peerless cheekbones and deceptively cold sexiness is only comparable to the 1930s Dietrich.

In "La Rupture", not everything in the plot strives to be "believable" - this is not the standard Hollywood thriller! It's rather a tragedy with surrealistic overtones and a very black sense of humor. To fully enjoy it, one must forget about "plot logic" and marvel at the rich character study, particularly of the main trio (Hélène, Régnier, Paul) but also the supporting characters depicting the "evil ways" of human nature (Régnier's wife; the three MacBethian "witches" who live at the pension; the understanding lawyer; the pension landlady and her alcoholic husband played by the great Jean Carmet; Paul's nymphomaniac girlfriend etc). What is refreshing with "La Rupture", as in Chabrol's best movies, is that things never happen the way we expect them to - there's always a welcome offbeat element waiting around the corner.

Don't watch this film if you only like thrillers with Cartesian logic, lots of action and gunshots; but do watch this if you like to see an experienced, talented filmmaker in full power of his craft who, though dealing with a below par material (the novel on which the film is based), manages to make a virulent attack on social conventions while thoroughly entertaining you. PS: The final scene may be too symbolic, psychedelic and "loose" for some tastes -- but that was 1970, folks!

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19 out of 20 people found the following comment useful :-
A second look at "la rupture"., 17 October 2001
9/10
Author: dbdumonteil

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

"La rupture" might be the best Chabrol.I've recently seen it and I think it has improved a lot with time,more than any other movie of the Chabrol 1967-1973 heyday,even more,in several respects,than "le boucher" or "que la bête meure".Completely overlooked,there is a lot of Chabrol fans that don't even know the existence of "la rupture",and the critic-when they know it - has always been condescending.

Why is it the best Chabrol?Because it has almost everything that we find in the director's other works:love,suspense,bourgeoisie contempt,mystery,humor-mostly black-,and even surrealism.Two influences are glaring as far as"la rupture" is concerned: Alfred Hitchcock 's(the actor,telling the heroine that the world is a dirty place recalls Uncle Charlie in "shadow of a doubt")and Henri-George Clouzot's(the boarding house recalls "l'assassin habite au 21")

The main topic is the power of money;never Chabrol has been as convincing as here.Michel Bouquet,the accurate prototype of a French bourgeois circa 1970 is terrifying.He's got a wallet by way of heart and he stalks his daughter-in-law as a spider on its web,to get the custody of his grandson.When Audran ,desperate,comes back from the airport,two scenes pack a real wallop:the first one shows the reunited couple,desperately trying to pick up the pieces,whereas they know they are bound to fail.Audran and Drouot are harrowing and the spectator wish they could get out of this money pigpen.A second scene,just following this one,shows Audran telling her contempt to the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie.Chabrol is actually speaking out here,and his voice has never been so devastating.

There 's a lot of subplots and never a Chabrol supporting cast has been so important.He achieves a real tour de force:every character is interesting,be it the owner of the boarding-house,her alcoholic husband,her retarded daughter,the three old ladies,the villain (Machiavellian Jean Pierre Cassel),his nymphomaniac accomplice,the good doctor....

Money allows very bad things,the right to pervert an innocent child is not the least.The scenes between the villains and Elise,the poor idiot have a contemporary feel .Money allows the over-possessive mother(an Hitchcockian influence again) to pick up her beloved child (in his thirties!), to read him "the knights of the round table",and to poison him with protection.Money allows to tarnish a brave mother's reputation when she makes her best to cope with her plight.

The movie eventually drags down the whole cast for an astounding finale,complete with drugs,deaths,hallucinations (a bit dated,admittedly)and the balloon release comes as a relief.

Stephane Audran ,more than 15 years before "babette's feast" is wonderfully cast as a mother who 's got to fight for her child and her honor.Her beauty radiates in this filthy world.Once again,"la rupture "

contains whole everything that Chabrol had done before and heralds the best that he has done since.It deserves to be restored to favor.

NB:It's superior to Charlotte Armstrong's "balloon man" which provided the story.All the names but one (Sonia)were Frenchified,Sherry becoming Helene.

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9 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
featuring the best"acid" hallucinations on film!, 19 November 2002
10/10
Author: pyamada from chicago

The parents of Charles, the loser and addict husband, who are impossibly bourgeoise, begin the cycle of dishonesty and class warfare, in their attempt to gain custody of the child. Helene is followed, harassed and finally drugged; her fear, paranoia and her hallucinations are "real" and very powerful. This is Chabrol at his best, giving a scathing critique of the whims and overall avarice of the bourgeoise and upper class while showing you the terrible fate of a very mortal character who is trying to escape from the mistake of marrying wealth and position.

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7 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
Totally Subversive And Profound, 11 September 2007
8/10
Author: Nin Chan from Canada

Though I've always found it difficult to stomach the parallels between Hitchcock and Chabrol (another user on this site highlighted the similarities Chabrol shares with Clouzot, a comparison that I concur with, Chabrol sharing Clouzot's moral ambiguity/overall weltschmerz), it would be foolhardy to deny the broad Hitchcockian flourishes here. Dipped and dredged in LSD, the hallucinatory sequences in here nod reverently to "Vertigo" and "Marnie". Yet, unlike some hitchcock staples (no gripes with Hitch here, he is after all my all time favorite director), there is nary a hint of escapism here. Instead, Chabrol plunges us head-first into the depths of modern complacency, a project that we are all complicit in.

The story itself is another virulently acerbic "thriller of manners" for Chabrol, capturing with Flaubertian honesty the farce upon which class distinctions are built. Other than Clouzot, I've always felt that Chabrol's work comes closest to Bunuel's (no surprise that Cassel and Audran would also feature in Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie)- he brings a blowtorch to insipid, self-satisfied, hypocritical civilization, and dares to gaze into the vacuous abyss beneath. Like Bunuel and Fassbinder, he does this with consummate style and infuses his films with cruelly ironic wit.

Chabrol's films are always unnerving to watch because they come too close for comfort, and never allow us to be self-satisfied. He asks some terribly important questions: at what price are bourgeois myths of propriety, morality and civilization bought? In "The Unfaithful Wife", murder is necessary to sustain the idyll, while this movie offers a profound dissection of bourgeois identity- in order for bourgeois "decorousness" and privilege to survive, it must posit an Other, the sordid, vulgar, ill-educated boor, even if it doesn't exist. Throughout "La Rupture" the viewer witnesses the creation of these supposed "absolutes", the unfurling of the absurd narrative that legitimizes bourgeois entitlement- sully, tar and feather the peasant, the Other. Like homophobia, class prejudice is only an expression of the precariousness of identity, without an opposite to define oneself against, the suppositions invariably crumble.

Chabrol is an acutely intelligent, courageous and singularly brilliant film maker. Don't miss this deconstructive masterpiece...as an examination of class, I think only "La Ceremonie" would surpass this one.

ps i can't help but wonder if the eccentric, insular boarding-house here is an homage to balzac's maison vauqeur in his incomparable "Old Goriot"- both the altruistic doctor (Bianchot) and the moustachioed, absurdly eloquent tempter (Vautrin) are parodied/mirrored here

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3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Regnier-Thomas-Chabrol, 4 April 2008
7/10
Author: jcappy from ny-vt

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

"La Rupture" (unsurpassed credit montage), serves as a glimpse, through two despicable characters, at masculinity unleashed, but at the same time its director, problematically--for him and the viewer, aligns himself with that same force.

Monsieur Regnier and Paul Thomas, the rich man and the player, as a team, are in-- in the specific sense the film presents--the flush of power, their capacity for deception and violence unmitigated. Up against an array of very restricted lives, the romance of evil that surrounds them seems to be further amplified. Chabrol has a similar boundless power over these characters, but his is not expressed so openly, but is rather written into his style, language, and camera work, each of which can be impoverishing and disparaging. (It is not Mr. Regnier & Thomas, after all, who turn Emilie and Paul's mate into sexed items for the viewers pleasure or displeasure).

Interesting that all the characters under the thumb of these convergent men are a group of insignificants who are either female or aligned with the female world, and with whom, despite their low status and victimization, Chabrol only occasionally sides. The actor boarder can be brave, and of course Helene can and does have a complex inner life and a defiant spirit (one albeit that's too costly) Yet, even she seems almost permanently glazed over, distressed, and exhausted. And her endless mothering of son and husband, while performing as a barmaid and being stalked--and drugged, is not exactly an argument for an independent identity.

But look at the meager others. All live in a tiny sphere which amounts to a hospital lobby and a constrictive gray boarding house in Brussels. The doctor is no more than a bit actor in a play, entering and exiting his scenes on cue. The landlady is portrayed as a puritanical prude, who inflexibly rules her cloistered hotel in the manner of a mother cop. Her husband is the stereotypical castrated husband, small in stature, reclusive, passive, unable (and unwilling) to stand up to his daunting wife. Emilie, their learning-disabled limp daughter is an uncomfortably overlarge doll in a disarrayed white dress and showy glasses, who might be more appropriate to a porn factory and who ends up pornified in the end. No doubt we are instructed to think of her as the sole offspring of her anti-sex mother. Thomas' over-sexed playmate has label written all over her--the woman who can't get enough, who is so lusty and lusting that the thought of dressing never occurs to her--over more than a few camera visits. The three old women--or witches here--are not the three graces of Joyce's "The Dead." They are rather laughable loners who are much less primordial witch than dried up card-playing spinsters stringently served up as the three-witches symbol. Finally, Helene's husband is no more than a kind enraged distortion let loose on the world by his power-mongering and greedy father, which in turn aligns him here with the female camp--making him vulnerable onto death.

In short, Chabrol exercises little vigilance or care for his characters. The undercurrents of hostility and misogyny have a kind of cumulative effect of manipulation and point to a lack of directorial integrity. His characters need more interiority and less violation. Hiding behind style, chicness, specious symbols, and technique doesn't cut it. I think a less heavy had and a less heavy mind is in order.

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3 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
Brilliantly realised commentary on the darker side of human nature - Chabrol's masterpiece!, 24 March 2008
9/10
Author: The_Void from Beverley Hills, England

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Of all the great films that Claude Chabrol made; The Breach is one of the most often praised, and that is not surprising at all as this film sees the great French director at the absolute top of his game and deserves every good word said about it! As ever with Chabrol, what we have here is a film that thrills on the surface but has much more going on beneath it. The characters are undoubtedly the most important thing about the film; and the director ensures that each one is brought to life effectively and believably, and this ensures that the film's many substantial points can come through. The film begins with a surreal sequence that could be something out of a zombie movie, as we see a dishevelled man emerge from the bathroom in just a robe and proceed to attack his wife Hélène. His attention soon moves on to the small boy and after putting the kid in hospital, the wife decides to file for a divorce. However, things are not so simple as her husband's father happens to be one of the richest and most powerful men in town, so he won't let Hélène take his grandson from him without a fight...and hires the immoral Paul Thomas to dig up some dirt on Hélène.

The film doesn't contain a great deal of excitement in the common thriller sense, but Chabrol keeps his audience on the edge of their seats by way of the characters and the atmosphere. The film centres on a boarding house and the people that live there; and the interaction between them makes up the bulk of the film. The main theme on display is an attack against the rich; this comes through plainly and obviously through the character of Ludovic Régnier; a man who has enough money to always get what he wants and not care about who gets trampled in the process. The outlook of the film is very bleak all round and Chabrol seems keen to show the dark side of human nature as much as possible. The central plot line, which involves a man trying to prove that an upstanding woman is an unfit mother by any means necessary, is very bleak in the way it plays out. As ever with Chabrol, the acting is excellent and he has put together a great cast here that includes his then wife and frequent muse, the beautiful Stéphane Audran in the lead role and a support cast that features superb performances from the likes of Jean-Pierre Cassel and Michel Bouquet. The film has a very unique style that fluctuates throughout; as mentioned, the first five minutes or so almost seem like something out a zombie movie and then it moves into more familiar Chabrol territory before changing again for the climax as the director gives us a very strange and striking hallucination sequence. Overall, this is an excellent thriller that comes highly recommended and I may even rate it as Chabrol's best.

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8 out of 15 people found the following comment useful :-
A must for Chabrol fans., 17 February 2000
8/10
Author: suspira78 from Montreal Canada

If one was to choose a 'French' equivalent of Hitchcock, I would say Claude Chabrol is the closest you can get. 'La Rupture' is a must for those who don't know the director's talent and thus art. As always, I would truly advise people to see this in French with subtitles for dubbed films aren't as accurate.

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Clouzot-ian thriller succeeds in part yet contains the odd misfire and miscasting, 11 October 2009
6/10
Author: matthewscott8 from United Kingdom

There's a quote from Racine at the beginning "Mais quelle épaisse nuit tout a coup m'environne", "What utter darkness suddenly surrounds me". That's the feeling Chabrol is trying to deliver, I presume. It didn't stack up that way for me, successive attempts to shock worked only sporadically, it was like a few firecrackers going off for me rather than a chain reaction building up to a grand finale; precious little tension was sustained. The overall feeling I got was more of the banality of evil.

The film is about a marriage that has imploded, and the fight for custody, between the bourgeois grandparents and the mother, of the child Michel, and the ensuing dirty tricks.

Stéphane Audran as the mother (Hélène Régnier) was almost anodyne throughout, soothing to the eye and nonplussed even when (metaphorically) the blindfold is taken away from her eyes and she finds a hooded cobra in front of her. I was worried that Marguerite Cassan as the "backwards" girl Emilie was hamming it up too much, and that the main concession to making her appear disabled was a large pair of silly glasses. Then I think Paul Thomas is an odd character, totally immoral, but not very human, we don't see that he's a sadist, or that he's upset about what he's doing. He seems almost bored at times. At the one point where there is fighting in the film it looked like stage fighting rather than film fighting.

Chabrol even seems to sabotage his own efforts by introducing a superfluous character, the kindly and highly caricatured Thespian Gerard Mostelle, who defuses every scene he is in, and was not even good for laughs It's not as bad as I make out though, there is some standout photography, generally involving a park and some balloons. There's a very nasty scene involving some black and white pornography that stays with you.

There has been some talk about this movie being a condemnation of the bourgeois, well in my opinion, the movie is about as ideological as a biscuit. I would far rather recommend another Chabrol's movie to those looking for that subject matter, his icy-cold movie Juste avant la nuit, co-incidentally it also stars Stéphane Audran and Michel Bouquet.

I should note that some of the scenes in this movie will be far more poignant to individuals who have gone through nasty breakup's of long term relationships, which is not something that has ever happened to me.

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5 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
Cleverer than thou, yet basically garbage, 25 October 2008
4/10
Author: oliver-177 from United States

First, this film is very sloppy in its narrative. The exposition is very poor, so you never can tell - for instance - how far the provincial town where the action takes place is from Paris. This matters because while one character is allegedly flying over from Paris, another one can go to Paris and back within two hours. Just as the location is vague, so are the characters. Compare the characters of La Rupture to those in variously successful similar movies of the same period (Marnie - Rosemary's Baby - Secret Ceremony - the Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie - the Bride Wore Black, the Naked Kiss), and you'll realize that you know nothing about the characters in the Chabrol film. Stéphane Audran has enormous star quality, but her acting is flat and uninvolving (Constance Towers or Tippi Hedren are like Katina Paxinou compared to Audran). The rest of the cast chews up the scenery shamelessly to disguise the plot gaps. And don't tell me about the critique of French bourgeoisie. There is more of that in Peau d'Ane. La Rupture may have been well received at the time, but it is a dated and lazy piece of movie-making.

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1 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
Truss Me, I'm A Cynic, 27 October 2008
8/10
Author: writers_reign from London, England

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

By and large I can take or leave Chabrol but he has made a lot of films with Isabelle Huppert which is more or less how and why I began watching his stuff. Apparently he had a 'rich' period around 1970 give or take a year or so either way and this entry was right at the heart of it. If he has a schtick it is subjecting small-town/suburban France to a powerful microscope and this is no exception for we are offered a microcosm of a decadent French society as seen through Chabrol's jaded eyes complete with three symbolic witches a la Macbeth. In terms of plot a man, heavily under the influence of LSD attacks his wife and child. She sues for divorce. His wealthy father moves heaven and earth to gain custody of the child. Virtually everyone is dirty. Forget a happy ending. Stephane Audran is excellent. What can I tell you.

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