'Que la bete meure' seems to diverge from Chabrol's characteristic methods in some ways. it begins with a death, as well as inexorably leading up to one. It does not directly concern the murderousness of bourgeois marriage, although it deals with that too. Most radically, we gain access to the main character's emotions and motivations, revealed through diary entries - usually Chabrol's characters reveal themselves through action or reaction, and then, motives are often obscure.
These are only really differences if we read Chabrol's film literally, superficially, which it is always fatal to do. The status of this diary must be questioned, especially when it moves outside the narrative, explaining Charles's motives, into it, as it becomes a barrier to his achieving a revenge, and is the only piece of evidence against him. We remember that he is a writer; in a sense, he creates the narrative, the film we are watching - he lives his life like a plot, with heroes, villains, romance and catharsis.
In this way, like so many Chabrol heroes and villains, he is linked to the director (at one point he stands by his home-movie camera), a voyeur, an intruder, while his lover is an actress. He writes childrens' books - as in many Chabrol films, 'Bete' is about the death of innocence: the film opens with the killing of a child; a second child is abused by his father to the point of contemplating murder. And yet, even when his son is killed, Charles wants to make believe it didn't happen, wants to live a different story.
So the film is full of stories, centred on, brought together and interpreted by Charles. In another 'story' concluding the film, his letter to Helen, he explains these stories, their purpose, even the meaning of the title; as he does so he is effacing himself, escaping France, the past, his identity. The Greek and religious elements structuring so many Chabrol films are made overt here, the equation complete in this most mathematical of films that began with such a terrifying sum, or a law of physics, with two contrary principles colliding.
And yet the last third is a babble of so many conflicting stories we don't know who or what to believe, how to filter lies from truths. This centres on the diary, its status as personal testimony, confession, cold-blooded plan, or an author's fiction. The neatness with which Charles' plot is tied up, as much as how it is engendered (the 'coincidence' of Paul's car getting stuck on a country lane), defies credibility, and the move from grim revenge thriller to hilarious bourgeois-baiting cartoon comedy is disarming to say the least. Is this simply a moving film about grief, about the patterns and fictions we create to help cope with what is essentially meaningless and horrifying? After all, if the beast must die, so must the man - and Chabrol, like his hero Hitchcock, is obsessed with doubles.
This narrative duplicity is matched in a rare Chabrol film of this period by a dour naturalism verging on ugliness, with deep, muddy colours, and harsh landscapes as pitiless as the revenger's quest. Yet another endlessly fascinating enigma from Chabrol.
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