Cop au Vin

A small town in France. Louis lives with his mother; she is paralysed and in a wheelchair. Three men want their house; the butcher, the lawyer and the doctor have joined together to buy up property in the area and set up a business. The mother refuses to sell. Louis works as a postman's assistant and steams open the three men's letters and reads them. Then a car crashes and the man inside dies. Then a woman disappears. Inspector Lavardin arrives in the town; he ignores the rules, hits witnesses, and gets results. Claude Chabrol directs. Jean Poiret, Stephane Audran, Michel Bouquet, Lucas Belvaux and Jean Topart are in the cast. It is a French production. The character of Lavardin appeared with this film and Chabrol made a second one with him the following year. The matter it treats is a provincial alliance; three respectable men of the town are partners in the same business. The film does not present the police as moral; Lavardin's methods are plainly outside the law. The relationship between mother and son is the most uncomfortable line in it. Chabrol again puts bourgeois hypocrisy at the centre and keeps the humour cold. The narrative gives a detective solution but its real interest is in the characters. The town locations are real and the story is built slowly. The ending clears nobody. Its limit is pace; the narrative is slow, the characters many, and the tension low. Who it is for: viewers who like Chabrol and French provincial crime. Who it is not for: it is slow, cold, and the ending rueful.