La Femme Infidèle (The Unfaithful Wife) is a 1969 French erotic thriller, written and directed by Claude Chabrol. It was re-released across UK cinemas a week last Friday, 11 September, and what a treat it was to see it on the big screen!

Wealthy insurance broker Charles Desvallées (Michel Bouquet) lives in a beautiful villa in Versailles with his wife, Hélène (Stéphane Audran), and their young son. Hélène often visits Paris, offering her husband a string of almost plausible excuses, but really, she is having an affair with a writer named Victor Pégala (Maurice Ronet). Charles becomes suspicious when he finds Hélène was not where she had claimed and hires a private investigator to follow her. Learning that his wife is having an affair, Charles visits Victor at his flat in Neuilly-sur-Seine.

A straight-forward old-fashioned plot. I was going to use the word simple, but that is far too condescending. The new-wave directors were huge fans of Hitchcock, and his work is clearly a huge influence here (although Chabrol denied any link), but this is about character and relationships as much as it is about the plot. To use a horse-racing metaphor, this is Hitchcock, out of Rohmer. The performances of Bouquet and Audran are perfectly nuanced – we travel with both of them from their apparent domestic bliss at the beginning, through their separate pain and loss, and back to a newly rekindled love and respect at the end.

The camerawork is wonderful, lots of languorous panning shots to establish the couple’s idyllic home, and indeed idyllic life. Chabrol’s filmmaking is, as ever, beautifully controlled. The pacing of the storytelling seems just right, never giving anything away too quickly, nor dwelling for too long on unnecessary detail.

Incidentally, there is a moment where the couple drive past a cinema showing another Chabrol film, Les Biches, which is an interesting nod to several other new-wave films, notably Hiroshima Mon Amour seen at a cinema in Godard’s Breathless, and Summer with Monika on a poster in Trouffaut’s The 400 Blows.

I have watched La Femme Infidèle many times on DVD, but it was a real treat to see it on the big screen. If you are able to catch this while it is still in cinemas, I would strongly recommend it.