Devilish

“Les Diaboliques” is a rare beast indeed; there’s not a moment in it that has aged in the slightest, and the in-no-hurry-to-give-us-a-clue-or-even-a-red-herring pacing gives it a sense of the banal, provincial and thereby the completely believable.

There’s an almighty reversal in the final moments, which is impressive but could have happened in any other arrangement of duplicities, long-buried lies and cruel-as-hell acting-out.

It’s a common-or-garden story of casual misogyny, sexual violence, greed and small-town jealousies and frustrations in regional France; the cinematography and set design give the proceedings the sense of a hall of mirrors or conjuring trick. This is fuelled wonderfully by a heavy sauce both of libidinal revenge, (“if only he could know it was me doing it…”) and crises of identity (“at least we will know who he is”).