Review of Nightcap (2000) by Budge B — 13 Apr 2009

A film which starts, you imagine, as a nice French / Swiss comedy of manners as a rich, talented couple remarry after a separation of some twenty years or so. She is the owner of company which makes legendary drinking chocolate. He, André, is a concert pianist. They appear blissfully happy - she, Mika, had remained friends with his in-between wife, had comforted him after her tragic death, and had readily assumed the role of mother to his teenage son, Guillaume. Bliss.

Enter a young music student, a tall elegantly beautiful young woman, Jeanne, who dreams of being a concert pianist. She learns from her mother that there had been mix-up at the hospital the night she was born, the famous concert pianist believing for a time that she was his child.

She sets out to visit the pianist - with all the potential for dramatic (or even comic) tension as the happy families are torn apart. What she uncovers is the nature of evil. Mika, so sweet and helpful and caring, has a pathological disregard for others. She manipulates - with her wealth, her beauty, her charm, her sweetness, or any other weapon she can find.

This is a beautifully made film. Isabelle Huppert and Anna Mougalis are outstanding. As an exploration of evil, it has great quality. But it is a film which doesn't really work. You can see where the story is going, you can enjoy the building tension, but ultimately the conclusion feels a bit tame. Except, Mika sheds a tear for her loss. Her husband does not. You wonder if he is so anaesthetised to any emotion other than the ones he experiences through music that he must share complicity in her crimes. He is so absorbed in his own self-importance as maestro, he simply fails to engage in the world around him. The pair are, indeed, suited to one another, but which one is most responsible for her crimes?

Claude Chabrol (Isabelle Huppert's husband) regularly makes liberal use of music in his films and this one is no exception. The direction of the piece echoes the changing mood of a concerto. The visuals are always elegant. And he celebrates his actors, particularly the female ones. This is an enjoyable film, and one which benefits from the 'making of' documentary and interview with Huppert which are offered as extras, but it is not Chabrol's best. A film to be enjoyed more for the quality of its acting than for its narrative satisfaction.