This September, Spectacle Theater continues its exploration into the late films of Claude Chabrol’s sprawling filmography, highlighting two features with the inimitable Isabelle Huppert, who swindles & scams her way through the maestro’s singular classical mode embodying the art of deception in the strange and twisted RIEN NE VA PLUS & the late-career tour-de-force MERCI POUR LE CHOCOLAT.
Special thanks to Arrow Video and the American Genre Film Archive.
RIEN NE VA PLUS
(THE SWINDLE)
dir. Claude Chabrol, 1997
101 mins. France
In French with English subtitles.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 03 – 10:00 PM
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 09 – 10:00 PM
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13– 7:30 PM
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 – MIDNIGHT
Isabelle Huppert and Michel Serrault star as Betty & Victor, an affable pair of con-artists who swindle their way through the deep-pocketed vacationers of the Côte d’Azur and the alps of Switzerland.
Structured like a comedy of gestures and glances, RIEN NE VA PLUS is a crime film exploring seduction, monogamy, and the games we play for and against one another, but the third act is as unhinged and surreal as Chabrol’s most twisted, with the scene-stealing Isabelle Huppert as the younger more ambitious swindler, who is as unpredictable as she is charming.
MERCI POUR LE CHOCOLAT
(NIGHTCAP)
dir. Claude Chabrol, 2000
101 mins. France
In French with English subtitles.
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 19* – 7:30 PM – Special Event – Introduction by film critic KYK – $10
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22 – 10:00 PM
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 24– 5:00 PM
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28 – 10:00 PM
A slow-burning familial-suspense thriller starring Isabelle Huppert as Mika, an heiress to a chocolate factory, who has just re-married her first husband, piano virtuoso, André Polonski. MERCI POUR LE CHOCOLAT (AKA, “NIGHTCAP”) is an atmospheric, dense, dark comedy of veneer and temperament, embedded with Chabrol’s usual themes of traumas, secrets, and lies, leveled with a formalist rigor and a delicate balance of mood.
