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October 27, 2006 > Arts & Entertainment > Bridesmaid lost before translation

Bridesmaid lost before translation

By Julia Bursten | Thresher Editorial Staff

Claude Chabrol has been writing screenplays since 1956 and directing them since 1958. One might expect that after half a century in the film business, he would know a thing or two about developing sympathetic characters. Especially when the characters come straight from the pages of a best-selling British crime novel by an author not especially known for personality complexity. One would be sorely disappointed.

La Demoiselle d’Honneur (The Bridesmaid), a 2004 suspense/romance film written and directed by Chabrol, was subtitled and released last week in American theaters. Based on the 1989 book of the same name by Ruth Rendell, it tells the story of the mildly dysfunctional Tardieu family and Senta (La Femme de Gilles’ Laura Smet), the extremely screwed-up girl who enters it. She falls for Phillipe Tardieu (Le Roi Danse’s Benoit Magimel) at his sister’s wedding, where she stood in as a bridesmaid at the request of a distant cousin. Phillipe falls for her. They have copious amounts of sex in Senta’s filthy basement apartment.

All seems well and good until Senta brings up her requirements for her lover in the post-coital conversation. She believes Phillipe must plant a tree, write a poem, make love to a man and kill someone. She’s serious. And Phillipe agrees.

Here is the first real question mark of the film. Magimel’s portrayal until this point is of a fairly reserved, hardworking and only slightly dull yuppie — in the novel Rendell’s character is actually averse to violence, although this tendency does not translate well into the on-screen Phillipe. And Chabrol introduces some early drama with subtle sexual tension between Phillipe and his mother Christine (Marie Antoinette’s Aurore Clement) and gives Phillipe a bit of a statue fetish. However, his character development never fully justifies his falling for Senta in the first place. So when he not only sticks with her but also consents to committing murder for her, it is extremely difficult to suspend disbelief.

If the point Chabrol wants to make is that love knows no rationality, then the plot in question would be a fine, if slightly twisted, way to convey that message. But side plots among the Tardieu family members and a soundtrack of string-heavy, tension-building instrumentals tend to detract from any purely romantic aspirations the story of Phillipe and Senta may have.

The result is confusing in any language, but the subtitles do little to help English-speaking viewers get a sense of Chabrol’s true meaning. There are multiple mis-translations that affect the tone of the characters’ conversations significantly, and the most disappointing part is that the English usually portrays The Bridesmaid’s characters as more coherent — and less believable. And while it would be nice to suppose Chabrol had some existential revelation hidden in his characters’ erratic speech and actions, it seems more likely that the inconsistencies that were lost in translation should stay there.

When the characters are not speaking, the soundtrack is inevitably cringeworthy. The original, all-instrumental score was composed by Chabrol’s son Matthieu, whose music sounds like a poor man’s Franz Waxman at best. The atmosphere it creates is violent and oppressive, and it often distracts from what semblance of a plot is unfolding on the screen.

The Bridesmaid is not without its redeeming factors, although they are few and far between. Smet plays a captivating psychopath as the film’s best-developed personality, and she is hauntingly beautiful as she does it. It is not hard to see why Phillipe falls so hard for Senta, because it is nearly impossible not to want to fulfill her every command — but why Senta lowers herself to Phillipe remains a mystery even as the final credits roll.

The Bridesmaid wants to be brilliant and insightful, but the story on which it bases itself is a pulp-fiction thriller. And finding meaning where there is none was done by plenty of Frenchmen long before Claude Chabrol: Viewers may prefer to skip the movie and spend their ticket money on a new copy of No Exit.

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