Diabolique [1996]

This film is all about intrigue, it works hard to keep you guessing and the chemistry between the three leads holds the film together. Kathy Bates makes an appearance as a wise-cracking private detective in a small but strangely comical role. Isabelle Adjani is beautiful and doe eyed, successfully balancing her characters innocence and more evil side. The always engaging Palminteri is suitably menacing in his role although not quite as sadistic as perhaps the character should have been.

Overall a very satisfying film, with a bit of everything for anyone.


This film misses the real context of the original   June 9, 2006
Jacques COULARDEAU (OLLIERGUES France)
3 out of 4 found this review helpful

This is a remake of the black and white adaptation of Boileau-Narcejac's novel. The shift from the French context to the American decor is nothing but a change of settings and it adds nothing. But it is extremely well built as a thriller and this American version adds a clearly stated sexual relationship between the two main women, the plotters. It also emphasizes this feminine presence by making the inspector a woman, which is unthinkable in the French context of the 1950s. And this woman can become an accomplice in the final cover-up, the final assassination of the ressuscitated victim, out of feminine understanding. The context of this let's say prep-school for boys is hardly described and does not correspond to the original French school for delinquents. We never get this idea that the kids are imprisoned and that the school is a reservation for anonymous survivors ghetto-ised out of the social war that is raging outside. And that is such schools that both the conservative right and the socialist left are asking for in France right now to take care of suburban young rebels who call themselves barbarians or the natives of the republic, be they black, brown, grey or white, which does not in anyway matter.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Paris Dauphine & University of Paris I Pantheon-Sorbonne



four great actors,one great film   August 28, 2005
0 out of 1 found this review helpful

This is a film to watch for the quality of the acting alone.
It also has an interesting plot and dialogue.It would stand out as a good play for the stage and that gives you some idea of how good the dialogue and acting are.A beutiful schoolteacher (Adjani) decides to murder her bullying husband and is helped by her friend (Sharon Stone).But the schoolteacher accidentally sets a police detective (cathy bates) onto their trail.


Lame remake of 1955 French Classic   June 9, 2007
pointone (Bournemouth UK)
The plot has everything, a sadistic headmaster, his rich, sick and abused wife, his hard bitten mistress that lives with them, the women teaming up to murder him.

But everything falls apart as the main characters, the wife Mia Baran (Isabelle Adjani), the mistress Nicole Horner (Sharon Stone) and the husband Guy Baran (Chazz Palmineri) are all woefully miscast and struggle with the psychological nature of a plot that requires the subtle building up suspense, fear and terror.

The only success is the retired detective Shirley Vogel (Kathy Bates) who helps to instil some tension into the final section of the film with a touch of humour.