Une Partie de Plaisir

Claude Chabrol, 1975
Certainly one of Chabrol’s better works, a good example to round together a number of his repeated themes. Technically, it usually starts off close before an establishing shot, though the opposite can occur. A lot of these changes come in tracks. Chabrol also has certain scenes with a still camera, more so than usual. Otherwise, the usual close work, pretty consistent back and forth, framing more tightly for tension etc.
This has some really interesting themes; notably the transfer from one bourgeois generation to the next. The usual themes of sexual jealousy are nicely put into this, rather than standing on their own. We have the older generation obsessed with learning and an idea of freedom, but balking at the consequences of this freedom. Also the remnants of high culture in the older, and a kind of steely nihilism, all about pleasure, really ‘just living’, rather than thinking of it in the abstract. There is at once something terrible about this change, but a satisfying ‘chickens to roost’ as well. As the younger generation carry out what is preached but not practised, violence ensues. And yet across this there are ties, of conjugal and family love, which are at once inter-generational but broken by this. Themes not too dissimilar, though obviously on an entirely different scale, from ‘The Leopard’.
As written, I found this one of Chabrol’s more complex and complete works.