Director: Claude Chabrol
Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Michel Serrault, François Cluzet
Running Time: 105 mins
Certificate: 15
Synopsis: Betty (Huppert) and Victor (Serrault) are professional swindlers. They get by with relative ease, taking advantage of lonely rich men, until Betty reveals their latest potential victim, Maurice (Cluzet). He’s an enigmatic treasurer of a multinational company, and their most difficult target yet, but the five million francs up for grabs prove too tempting. Betty’s allegiances are soon called into question, as it becomes increasingly difficult to see what her true motives are.
Chabrol wrote and directed this crime thriller, which, like a lot of French New Wave cinema (which he was a co-innovator of in the fifties and sixties), adopts a deliberately casual pace. It also focuses primarily on exposition and dialogue rather than all-out action, which is refreshing, particularly coming from a genre that can often excel visually, but rarely backs it up with a story of substance. The dialogue-heavy scenes can be laborious at times, but are broken up by the picturesque cinematography and scenery; from the Swiss Alps to the tropics.
The intricate plot and opaque intentions of the main characters are the primary selling point, and provide genuine intrigue. The dry sardonic wit exemplified by the relationship and pithy banter between Betty and Victor, is also a joy to behold at first, although it does wear thin after a while. This is because, although it is rare and exciting, you eventually realise that you don’t trust any of these people in the slightest, and they don’t trust each other, so you have no real emotional stake in the outcome.
However, this does give the film an edge, in that it can send a victim of Betty and Victor’s deception down one avenue of assumption, the audience down another, and then seamlessly end up in an entirely unexpected scenario where everyone’s suspicions were wrong. Chabrol does this subtly and it is very satisfying. Furthermore, due to the impersonal nature of the genre (unless you are a professional criminal, of course), and the fact that the characters are interesting, if not inherently likable, it can be forgiven, as there is a definite urge to find out how the story ends.
This craving isn’t fully doused as the conclusion does disappoint to an extent. It feels slightly maudlin and rushed after the nonchalant methodical rhythm throughout, and it borrows more from Hollywood ideals and routine, rather than the less predictable French New Wave repertoire, which is a jarring tonal change in relation to the rest of the narrative.
The palpable chemistry between Betty and Victor, along with the cleverly elusive plot, makes RIEN NE VA PLUS definitely worth watching. However, there is always a certain distance maintained between the audience and the characters, and the questionable resolution reduces a potentially excellent caper to a slightly above average one.
RIEN NE VA PLUS is available to buy on DVD from 24th September.
