Country: France-Italy
Director: Claude Chabrol
In his book "Have You Seen . . . ?" David Thomson calls Le Boucher "a picture to be seen repeatedly over the years." In my experience, such movies tend to fall into two groups. In one group are the most complex films—Citizen Kane, Vertigo, Persona, 8½, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie—the convoluted products of a great filmmaker's overcrowded imagination that invite you to savor their technical and narrative intricacies again and again, but even after many viewings still remain resistant to ever being fully known. In the other group are the simplest films—Bringing Up Baby, The Naked Spur, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Pather Panchali—movies made not without style, but with an absolute economy of style that reduces film storytelling to its essentials. If Thomson is right about Le Boucher, then it is definitely of the latter type.
The film begins at a wedding in the Périgord, in south central France, where Hélène (Stéphane Audran), the principal of the village elementary school, and Popaul (Jean Yanne), the local butcher, find themselves seated next to each other at a banquet table. It's obvious from the beginning that a special rapport exists between them, and the two strike up an immediate friendship that soon develops into an easy camaraderie that stops just short of romance. Both are in a sense outsiders, and both have experience of the greater world beyond the rather insular village.