Mort un dimanche de pluie (1986)

User Rating:

6.9/10   

Director:

Joël Santoni

Writers:

Joan Aiken (novel)
Joël Santoni (writer)

Release Date:

10 September 1986 (France)

Genre:

Horror | Thriller

Plot:

Thriller about a psycho looking for revenge. Bronsky (Jean-Pierre Bisson) is a paraplegic because of...

Plot Keywords:

Revenge | Physical Abuse | Psychopath | House | Serial Killer

Cast

Nicole Garcia	...	Elaine Briand
Dominique Lavanant	...	Hazel Bronsky
Jean-Pierre Bacri	...	David Briand
Jean-Pierre Bisson	...	Cappy Bronsky
Jean-Pierre Malo	...	Alain Milles
Christine Laurent	...	Diane
Etienne Chicot	...	Christian
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Pierre Arbel
Denis Favrichon
Jean Filliez
Rene Groulade
Yves Jolidon
Cerise Leclerc	...	Cric Briand
Jean-François Mathieu
Adrien Nicati
Nathalie Personnaz
Alain Rieder
Jan Rouiller
Margueritha Sanchez
Gerard Sutter
Marshall Titus
Patrick Uhlmann
Céline Vauge
Cerise Vauge
Edmond Vullioud
Georges Wod

Also Known As:

Death on a Rainy Sunday

Runtime:

109 min

Country:

France | Switzerland

Language:

French

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

France:-12

Company:

Centre National de la Cinématographie (CNC)

The glass house.

Joel Santoni has made a handful of movies theatrically released."Mort un dimanche de pluie" was his last work before he went to make TV movies.It's also his best and one of the rare French thrillers of the eighties which seems to go somewhere.Like in the (much inferior) American "the glass house " (2001/I),an architect (Bacri) and his wife (Garcia) live in a luxury transparent house with their daughter.Enter a strange couple ,they have a daughter too:he is an one-armed man the father hires as a gardener(!);his spouse will be the daughter's nanny (who predates Rebecca DeMornay's famous part by half a decade );and the sinister couple's offspring is an absolute half-wit whose only pastime is to play a child's music box:these notes become infuriating after a while.It seems that the man lost his arm when he was working on a building site and that the architect has something to do with it.

Then it becomes a bloody violent story involving child molestation,blackmail,murders and madness.The first hour is sometimes remarkable,building a tension,a rising anxiety in the isolated mansion where the rain never stops falling.Only the scenes in the studio where Garcia works get in the way,displaying a black singer who epitomizes the worst of the eighties music ,and breaking the malefic spell. The last third is less satisfying ,verging on horror flicks such as "Friday the 13th" or even "the shining" .But there are strokes of inspiration:Nicole Garcia,running in the night in a red dress , the shrew climbing in a water tower with the two girls,or the poor idiot shedding a tear. "Mort un dimanche de pluie' has fallen into oblivion:it's all the more unfair as its ending is not what we generally expect when a whole "nice" family is involved.