454
JONATH AN BAUMBACH
In
La Femme lnfidele,
which is the Chabrol film closest in configuration
to
Wedding in Blood,
a gentle, somewhat impassive suburbanite discovers that
his wife has a lover in Paris. He goes to see this adversary for a civilized discus–
sion and in an improvisation of rage ends up killing him. At the end of the
film in an extraordinary shot, Chabrol indicates that as the husband is being
taken away by the police (his wife and son together watching his departure) he
is closer to his family than he has ever been. Similarly, the last scene in
Wed–
ding in Blood,
with Pierre and Lucienne in handcuffs in the back of a police
van clasping hands, implies a more profound intimacy between them than
anything that has gone before. Chabrol's absurd bourgeois are capable of sur–
prising resources of dignity at the last extreme.
It
is the symmetry of Chabrol's films, the aesthetic rightness of their form,
that makes them at their best so satisfying. His most bizarre human transac–
tions offer experience, which is to say evidence, of grace in the universe.
