A Double Tour DVD – Jean-Paul Belmondo, Madeleine Robinson 

Claude Chabrol directs this murder mystery based on a novel by Stanley Ellin. Henri Marcoux (Jacques Dacqmine) is a wealthy middle-aged vineyard owner in Provence who is having an affair with a much a younger woman, Leda (Antonella Lualdi). His wife, Therese (Madeleine Robinson), reluctantly agrees to turn a blind eye in order to avoid a scandal, but then a murder brings all the family’s dirty little secrets scurrying into the light.

New Wave director Claude Chabrol employs an aloof perspective in this tale of murder and a dysfunctional family The paterfamilias Henri Marcoux (Jacques Dacqmine) is having a fling with the neighbor woman Leda (Antonella Lualdi) When she turns up murdered police suspect the milkman a friend of the Marcoux’s sultry maid Julie But Laszlo (Jean-Paul Belmondo) the non-conformist Hungarian boyfriend of Henri’s daughter Elisabeth (Jeanne Valerie) thinks not Was the killer Henri’s unbalanced son Richard? His wife Therese (Madeleine Robinson) is a regular harridan; is she guilty?

The third film from Claude Chabrol and his first in colour Double Tour is both a characteristically suspenseful thriller and a cruel portrait of bourgeois life. Henri Marcoux (Jacques Dacqmine) a respectable middle-class man living in Province with his wife and two children is having an affair with a younger woman Lda (Antonella Lualdi). His wife the redoubtable Thrse Marcoux (Madeleine Robinson) is determined to avoid a scandal at any price even to the extent of breaking off her daughter’s engagement when she learns that her future son-in-law Laszlo (Belmondo) has been sympathising with her husband. Then the unthinkable happens – Lda is found dead. But who is the killer? Taking the part of Laszlo Kovacs after first choice Jean-Claude Brialy fell ill Belmondo gives an impressively restrained performance that in conjunction with his following film A bout de souffl set him on the road to stardom.