This is a pleasant film by Claude Chabrol, nothing like the forbidding title "La Fleur du Mal" would suggest. I say pleasant in that there is nothing gross or ugly about it or really shocking, and it ends in a way that most viewers would find agreeable. There is some dark suggestion of family evil and a kind of playful non-incest and some skeletons in the closet from the Nazi occupation and one dead man at the end, but otherwise this is almost a comedy.

It is not, however, in my opinion his best work, but is very representative. My favorite Chabrol film is Une affaire de femmes (1988) starring Isabelle Huppert and Francois Cluzet. I also liked La Cérémonie (1995) featuring Sandrine Bonnaire, Isabelle Huppert and Jacqueline Bisset. Both of these are much darker works than The Flower of Evil.

As in many Chabrol films this starts slowly but manages to be interesting thanks to some veracious color and characterization blended with a hint of the tension to come. And then, also characteristic of Chabrol, there is a interesting finish.

Nathalie Baye plays Anne Charpin-Vasseur, who in her fifties decides to run for mayor. Her philandering husband Gérard (Bernard Le Coq) is not pleased. Benoit Magimel plays the prodigal son Francois Vasseur, just home after four years in the US, while Melanie Doutey plays his non-biological sister Michele. Francois apparently ran away to the States to cool his growing attraction to Michele (to her disappointment). Now on his return their love blooms.

This is very much approved of by Aunt Line (played wonderfully well with spry energy by Suzanne Flon who was 85 years old when the film was made). Their affair reminds her of her youth, a mixed blessing since she lived through some horrors.

The main plot concerns the opposition that Anne is getting as she runs for mayor. A leaflet accusing the family of collaboration with the Nazis during WWII is distributed that threatens to derail her campaign.

See this for one of France's great ladies of both film and the theater, Suzanne Flon, who died last year after a career than spanned five decades.

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"La Fleur du Mal" (Flower of Evil) unfolded like a multi-layered nineteenth-century novel. There was a plot involving politics, a plot involving romance, and the deep family secrets that appear to have afflicted the characters in a multi-generational curse. One of the characters even refers to their lives as the equivalent of a novel by Emile Zola.

I appreciated the rich psychological levels of the characters and the fine performances under the direction of Claude Chabrol. The character of Aunt Line as played by Suzanne Flon was especially moving. There were effective emotional moments involving reverie and interior monologue that conveyed great depth of feeling. In American films, we would have been given generic "flashback" scenes. In the more subtle European film-making style, the performer conveyed the past through emotional expression.

Like so many of the great nineteenth-century novels where everyone seems to be marrying his or her cousin, so too in "La Fleur du Mal" one of the plot lines focuses on a young man and woman deeply in love, who realize that their bloodlines are too close for comfort. Some of the film's most intense scenes are those in which the couple seeks to understand their complex family ties.

Interestingly, this eclectic film is not without dark humor, including a truly bizarre sequence related to an accidental murder. Stylistically, this is a film experience with lush cinematography of the contemporary Bordeaux region, filled with sensitive compositional choices and careful set-ups. If the characters had been outfitted in nineteenth-century costumes, this really could have been a Zola novel.

The picture talks upon a bourgeois family formed by parents previously divorced (Bernard Le Coq and Natalie Baye) , sons (Benoit Maginel and Melanie Doutey) and grandmother (Suzanne Flon). Terrible secrets emerge and are creating a spiral of consequences until lead to a tragic final .

The movie is well directed by Claude Chabrol who's deemed to be a master in the suspense genre , besides is considered as an initiator of the new wave or nouvelle vague , this movement had got splendor during the 60s . It's habitual in Chabrol films to deal with particular issues, thus : Obsession , adulteries , assassinations , jealousy , treason and he makes a penetrating description of the middle bourgeois class . All those characters are well narrated in the film . The cast is excellent , Benoit Maginel is good , Melanie Doutey is beautiful and attractive . Natalie Baye and the veteran Suzanne Flonn are impressive. Cinematography by Eduardo Serra (Young of the earring pearl ) is nicely made although mostly developed at interior scenarios. The film will appeal to suspense fans and Claude Chabrol moviegoers. Rating : Above average. Well catching.