MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Cry of the Owl’ Echoes Hitchcock, Lang

Expatriate American crime novelist Patricia Highsmith has had the good fortune to have her work brought to the screen most notably by Alfred Hitchcock with “Strangers on a Train” (1951), by Rene Clement with “Purple Noon” (1959) and now by Claude Chabrol with “The Cry of the Owl” (at the Monica 4-Plex).

As suspenseful as it is darkly amusing, “The Cry of the Owl” was completed in 1987 but arrives only now, thanks to the vagaries of American distribution of foreign films. It is top-drawer Chabrol, his easy mastery deploying escalating outrageousness with the utmost conviction. By the end of the film he leaves you believing he could get away with just about anything; that’s because the interplay between the absurd working of fate and the curious foibles of human nature has been developed so knowingly.

As in “Strangers on a Train” and “Purple Noon,” “The Cry of the Owl” turns upon a psychological exchange of identity between two men. After three months of playing Peeping Tom, a handsome young man, Robert Forestier (Christophe Malavoy), finds himself speaking to the pert young woman, Juliette Voland (Mathilda May), who has so captivated him as she has gone about her daily routines in a fine old cottage in the countryside near Vichy. Now it’s her turn to be even more enchanted by him, not merely by his looks or even his classic French suavity and poise, but by his apparent openness. He admits to a history of nervous breakdowns, and has in fact come to Vichy from Paris to fight off depression in the wake of an imminent divorce.

For Robert, Juliette represents a dream, but when she--not he--tries to make it come true she inadvertently sets off a chain reaction of catastrophes, something she actually intuits. Robert’s spirits improve rapidly under Juliette’s acceptance of him, but it is she who falls in love whereas Robert is looking only for friendship.

Left alone Juliette and Robert might well have worked things out. But Juliette has a hotheaded, jealous fiance (Jacques Penot), who lurches out of control just as Robert is regaining his emotional equilibrium. Then there’s Robert’s soon-to-be-ex (Virginie Thevenet), the ultimate woman scorned possessed with a lethal streak of maliciousness. If that weren’t enough trouble, Juliette has a nosy, troublemaking neighbor (Agnes Denefle) who seems to be in love with her herself. In very short order dire events start happening, with everything pointing to Robert, who seems to become Hitchcock’s archetypal innocent man, as the culprit.

It’s commonplace to compare Chabrol with Hitchcock, who is in fact one of the director’s idols. But it is Chabrol who remarked that “Without Lang there would be no Hitchcock,” and “The Cry of the Owl” reverberates with Fritz Lang’s classic theme, the individual’s struggle against fate. More so than Lang, Hitchcock and Chabrol find bleak humor in such a predicament.

As always, Chabrol is fond of depicting the most horrendous acts in the most beautiful of settings, both natural and man-made, and his regular cameraman, Jean Rabier, has given the film a shadowy sheen. Chabrol’s son, Matthieu, has contributed an exceedingly spare score that is alternately sinister and turbulent.

A cool, understated style perfected over the last 35 years and a wizardry with a group of perfectly cast actors, which includes Jean-Pierre Kalfon as a wise and sorely tried police lieutenant, permits Chabrol to make of “The Cry of the Owl” (adult themes, violence) a gratifying entertainment of leisurely elegance--and delicious nastiness.

‘The Cry of the Owl’

Christophe Malavoy: Robert Forestier

Mathilda May: Juliette Voland

Jacques Penot: Patrick Soulages

Jean-Pierre Kalfon: Lieutenant Gregoire

Virginie Thevenet: Veronique

An R5/S8 presentation of an Italfrance Films production. Director Claude Chabrol. Producer Antonio Passalia. Screenplay by Claude Chabrol and Odile Barski; from the novel by Patricia Highsmith. Cinematographer Jean Rabier. Editor Monique Fardoulis. Costumes Magali Fustier; Christophe Malavoy’s clothes by Dominique Morlotti for Christian Dior. Music Matthieu Chabrol. In French, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour, 54 minutes.

Times-rated: Mature (adult themes, violence).