The Bridesmaid

Like The Ceremony (1995), Claude Chabrol’s previous adaptation of a Ruth Rendell novel, this 2004 French feature seems concerned not so much with the psychopathology of everyday life as with psychopaths who lurk behind the everyday. On a more obvious level the hero (Benoit Magimel) falls in love with his sister’s bridesmaid (Laura Smet) but gradually discovers how weird she is; on a more subtle and in some ways more interesting level he lives in denial of how weird his own supposedly normal family is. Chabrol develops both stories with a great deal of finesse. With Aurore Clement. In French with subtitles. 111 min. (JR)

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