Le Boucher (1970)

In a small French village, a schoolteacher (Stephane Audran) begins a platonic relationship with the local butcher (Jean Yanne) though it's clear he wants more than a casual relationship. Meanwhile, a series of brutal murders in the surrounding countryside sets the town on edge. The thrillers of Claude Chabrol are often compared to Hitchcock but while thematically they may share a common element, in execution, they are quite different. With one exception (blood dripping down on a child's piece of bread), there aren't any Hitchcockian touches or set pieces. This is a controlled, perhaps overly so, concise thriller that blurs the line of empathy and disturbing suggestions of responsibility. Essentially a two character piece with the elegant Audran cast against type as an emotionally repressed spinster and Yanne as a clumsy, slightly Neanderthal, brute who just wants to love and be loved. Chabrol gives us a lot to work with here including the possible effects of war and its damage to the human psyche. A thinking man's thriller with some handsome lensing by Jean Rabier (UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG). With Mario Beccara.