Alice or the Last Escapade

One night Alice leaves her husband and drives off. In the rain the windscreen shatters and she has to take shelter at a nearby manor house. Two old men receive her kindly, feed her, find her a room. In the morning the car will be repaired and she can go. But when morning comes there is nobody in the house. Alice goes out into the grounds and cannot reach the road; every path she takes brings her back to the same door. The larger the house grows, the less certain it is who she is. Claude Chabrol directs the French film; ninety-three minutes, with Sylvia Kristel as Alice and Charles Vanel as her host. It nods openly at Lewis Carroll's Alice; Chabrol steps out of crime into the fantastic here and makes one of the odd works of his career.