Just Before Nightfall

Charles Masson, an advertising executive, is having an affair with Laura, the wife of his closest friend Francois. At one of their meetings, during a sadomasochistic game, he kills her. The police suspect nobody; what troubles Charles is his conscience. He confesses first to his wife Helene and then to Francois. Both try to talk him out of going to the police. He decides to turn himself in anyway. Helene stops him by deliberately overdosing his sleeping medicine, and the death is recorded as suicide. Claude Chabrol directed, from Edward Atiyah's 1951 novel The Thin Line. Michel Bouquet plays Charles and Stephane Audran plays Helene. Roger Ebert counted it among Chabrol's best films on his favourite theme. Vincent Canby in the New York Times wrote that it continues to provoke the memory long after one has left the theatre, and called it a comedy of a high, intelligent and dark order. Stephane Audran won the BAFTA for Best Actress for this film together with The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Who it is for: viewers who like films about conscience rather than about crimes going unpunished, and Chabrol's portraits of the bourgeoisie. Who it is not for: anyone wanting justice. Nobody is caught here, and the final decision is made not by the law but by a wife.