Péril en la demeure

Plot synopsis:
David Aurphet, a struggling guitar teacher is invited to give lessons to Viviane Tombsthay the daughter of a well-to-do couple. The wife, Julia, seduces him easily. They seem to be set on a standard affair when David gets a video with footage of their adultery. He confides in a friend Edwige who has a VCR and is a neighbour of the Tombsthays. At the same time, David is attacked but saved by the strange Daniel Forest. He admits to being a killer with Graham Thombsthay as a target. He warns David about Julia, giving him a gun. While her husband is away Julia invites David to their home. David arrives but finds Graham there wanting to kill him. David uses the gun. Julia warns David to hide and he seeks refuge with Edwige. She shows him a video that proves that Julia has killed Graham. David returns to the house where he finds Daniel, with a gun. David kills him, hides the body and leaves to look for Viviane with whom he will escape.

Tags: psychedelic

Review:
Erotic Thriller, French Style.
Péril en la demeure is a rather unusual little thriller, in which musician David Aurphet starts an affair with the mother of his pupil.
Her husband finds out and David's life has some nightmarish turns.
I have to admit that my description makes it sound rather conventional but it certainly is not.It is debatable how well this film works as a thriller, but there is no doubt that the love scenes between Nicole Garcia and Christophe Malavoy are absolutely stunning.
They ooze sensuality and are almost like a ballet, both people moving sensitively, slowly, and silently, suggesting, responding to the other, teasing and hesitating, touching and retreating.
These few little scenes belong to the most erotic moments ever to be put on celluloid..
Threatening Erotics that seem to be waiting to explode in violence..
Although the film has some very beautiful & erotically tense scenes, the little & few dialogues, combined with moody glares, make even some of the completely silent scenes very threatening.
It's a little like listening to the rumbling of a live volcano, not being able to run and wondering if, and when it will erupt..
what lies beneath a cozy upper class mansion.
Michel Deville is a French filmmaker known for his aesthetic refinement and "Péril en la Demeure" bears its author's trademark.
It's filmed with elegance and everything from the scenery to the acting, the camera angles to the music without mentioning witty dialogs breathes the refined.
One can't forget the neat link shots, the fluid editing that add to the pernicious charm this shady thriller exudes from its three exploited mainsprings: perversion, manipulation and voyeurism.
Nearly everyone in this film is a peeping tom like the offbeat female neighborhood (Anémone) who films the lovemaking between the guitarist teacher David (Christophe Malavoy) and Julia (Nicole Garcia) or Julia's husband Graham (Michel Piccoli) who watched these lovemaking sessions on the videotape.
As for the manipulation, Julia leads David up the garden path by making him believe that he killed her husband while seasoned killer Daniel (Richard Bohringer) tries to make him understand that he's got a mission to fulfill.Deville diverts the codes, the ingredients of the genre to his own advantage to create a stylish, idiosyncratic thriller and a mirror film directed to the viewer about his peeping tom side.
It's easy to let oneself immerse in this universe and to forget the irregularities or glitches that undermine a little the storytelling even if Deville has recourse to zones of shadow and clues likely to explain the characters' motivations.
If the filmmaker bore this in mind, he can be forgiven for his possible mistakes..
No other country but France would get away with this film!.
There are films where things happen that at first do not make sense.So you think about it all during and maybe after.Maybe you watch it again.Now MEMENTO would be one of those films.Then there would be DEATH IN A FRENCH GARDEN.Almost every aspect of the plot makes no conventional sense.There are some seriously open ended concepts.eg the father allegedly had boyfriends earlier in life,there is mention that the mother only wants the guitar teacher because he looks like her brother.Who really wants who and how are any of them really connected?The alleged hit-man seems to have set the teacher up for the fall all along,but then doesn't have any bullets in his gun on purpose at the time needed.OK,every aspect of his character screams wannabe lover of the teacher,which is maybe why he allows him to know a version of the truth which results in him coming into 300,000 Francs for making every mistake in the book.
Why is there no lock on the new place?What is the point of the teasing,perverse neighbour who lies about everything?
I ended up thinking that the makers of this film were having a laugh because every aspect of every character could be a lie.Not one thing about any of them holds up to examination or belies true human interaction and behaviour.
Even though at the end it is totally frustrating,I still liked the damn thing!Its open to numerous interpretations,but I don't think any would truly hold water.I think really its just a deconstruction of the labyrinthine narrative of the conventional thriller/neo-noir.None of it means anything...because I may not sleep for a week thinking about what it all means really...and no film is that important!.
A paradoxical mystery you hope you never solve.
One of the movies that keep on running long after you've stopped watching.
One of those paradoxical stories, that become the more confused the more one understands.
One of those one is tempted to watch again and again, hoping to understand this time, at the same time anxious to spoil the commitment by finally finding out what it's all about.
Perhaps paradox is the key.
Nicole Garcia's tempting beyond all limits turns out to be destruction (poor telephone!), Piccoli's apparent impotence turns out to be masterminding some hideous plan, Bohringer's menacing ways lead to redemption.
The more Malavoy gets into the mess, the more lustfully he ventures on getting even deeper into it.
Malavoy's father hands the little time-bomb to his son as if it was his old watch or camera, wishing him luck and grinning as if it's been just another visit of a beloved child.
And things become boring once they're solved and all the hoods dead.
What's left is a country community on an old farm.
Who wouldn't yearn to be back in the beautiful and elegant bourgeois world Malavoy and his pupil have just left, the corruption and conspiracy it conceals below an innocent surface not being an odd, but the matter you actually want..
Laying It On With A Trowel.
This is one for the 'style-over-content' buffs which is not, of course, in itself a bad thing.
Stylish it definitely is; in spades yet, but content.
It's one of those entries where even as you are admiring the style you find yourself asking pertinent questions (Warning: Spoilers Ahead).
How has the guitar tutor come to the attention of the family, so much so that the father will consider no one else to teach his - as it turns out - precocious daughter?
Would the tutor really leave a tuning-fork behind at his initial interview, indeed, would he even have 1) taken it at all and 2) removed it from his pocket if he had?
Given that he DID leave it behind without realising, would the wife insist on returning it to him immediately and then seduce him?
Would an apparently single woman living alone move into a large, expensive, family-sized home, effect a limp merely because she had a cane with her, invite a stranger into her new home and over light refreshments engage him in a discussion on the relative pros and cons  of blonde versus brunette pubic hair?
Would this same eccentric neighbor begin immediately to videotape the sex sessions the tutor enjoyed with the mother of his pupil and then send the tapes to the participants for no recognisable (i.e. blackmail) motive?
Would a hit-man be passing at the precise moment the tutor is attacked and, having saved the tutor would the hit-man go on to befriend him and ultimately confide that his next 'target' is the father of his pupil?
If you answered 'yes' to any or all of these questions do you always park your brain at the popcorn stand on the way to the auditorium?
The trick with a movie of this kind is that, Yes, you DO ask yourself these questions even as the improbable sequence of events unfolds before your eyes but you choose to IGNORE them and surrender to the Style and/or performances.
With heavy hitters like these you won't go far wrong and the film remains ultimately a triumph of style over content.
Playful, bold, and surprising.
"Death In A French Garden" is a film that only the French could have made, and, in this case at least, this is meant as a compliment.
It's both low-down and elegant; it's sexually very frank, with characters on the edge of morality, but at the same time the director keeps winking at you, telling you not to take all of this too seriously.
This attitude is personified by the lead of the film, Christophe Malavoy, who stays bemused and unshocked for, say, 95% of the time, even though he meets nymphomaniacs, weirdos, assassins, etc.
Some of these characters may appear extraneous at first, but they all serve their purpose as the constantly surprising plot unfolds.
And classical music buffs will love the eclectic soundtrack.