Claude Chabrol’s low-key quasi-noir The Bridesmaid wraps its main character in what amounts to be both a horror story about love and a darkly comedic joke. Philippe Tardieu (Benoît Magimel), a young salesman in his late 20s, is the breadwinner in his family, looking after his mother Christine (Aurore Clément) and two sisters. The mother tries to meet a new man, but her family rejects her choice as a jerk; one sister is about to get married, and the other is a teen bordering on typically nihilistic rebellion, but when the film starts the buttoned-down Philippe has the family under his monetary control and patriarchal gaze. Even before anything goes awry Chabrol stages an amusingly heavy-handed gag to reveal the unseen darkness inside Philippe’s character: after Christine gives away a bust of a woman her ex-husband thought looked like her to her current boyfriend, Philippe hops the man’s fence in the dark of night and robs his garden of the bust, secreting it away in his closet and taking it out periodically to kiss or gaze at.

But the real trouble for the young man comes at the sister’s wedding, where her bridesmaid Senta (Laura Smet) immediately falls for Philippe and the usually restrained young man returns the affection with a relieving, understandable lust. Seta’s declarations of love are strong, immediate and suspicious, but like a typically infatuated man, Philippe superficially returns her weighed words. Chabrol has much fun in his direction of Smet, giving this kittenish beauty immediately the air of oddity with trouble to come, as one takes in her unquestionable sincerity, the faux-strangeness of her basement apartment in a decaying, near-abandoned building (replete with a homeless man lurking outside), and Philippe’s increasing awareness of the degree her solipsism and obsession. This oddity certainly has an allure from the drabness of Philippe’s life, and he begins staying over at Senta’s, missing dinners with her mother, avoiding his younger sister, and exhausted himself with work and pleasure.

In Chabrol’s droll suburban world, Senta’s lethargic, purely sexual appeal is an escape from Philippe’s completely plain bourgeois existence. Neglecting the dysfunction in his sister and the obvious loneliness of his mother, Philippe’s fixation on Senta brings life into his routine just as it destabilizes those around him. (Tellingly, despite his sudden and plentiful neglect, Philippe continues to work diligently at his job and strongly desires to fix up Senta’s building; the minx may distract him from the bourgeois environment but he remains unconverted from the need for financial prosperity and security of his class.) Their relationship is in marked contrast to the goofy match of Philippe’s beautiful sister and her young, sexless goofball husband—Senta and Philippe sharing deep kisses and expressing sensual longings long unreleased by both of them while the other couple seems artificial and comically awkward.

Given her oddities it comes as no surprise when Senta’s intense personality gradually reveals itself to be charged with violence. With this threat of the horrorific dangers of intense relationships The Bridesmaid seems to be functioning as a dry little erotic thriller, but it actually is more like a dry-cough joke on the part of Chabrol, wrapping the absurd in a social thriller. Clearly referencing the entwinement of sexuality, violence, and relationships in both Psycho and Strangers on a Train, The Bridesmaid successfully walks the line between inspiring eroticism and thrills from its situation and prodding snickers out its audience. When Philippe exhaustedly falls asleep cradling the bust in his arms that resembles both Senta and his mother there is no doubt that some, if not all, of this is film is suppose to be amusing; likewise when Senta ominously suggests they each kill someone to express their love and Philippe enthusiastically takes the credit for dispatching dead bum whose death he read about in the newspaper. The sheer verve of both the lead actors (and a small, but poignant performance of quiet suffering from Aurore Clément) allows one to flow with the movie and not be alienated by the absurdity of the situation, but truthfully it is tough to find in the film’s narrative ludicrousness much to say about either the genre Chabrol is working with or the social strata implicated both as the audience of, and participants within, this genre of film. Yes, it is amusing that a borderline absurd gothic romance is what it takes for a reticent, boringly responsible bourgeois male to show some emotion, and likewise it is amusing to see how the access to such emotion could push a rational person close to crime and mania, but the film remains entrenched in its own low-keyness and seems to have little desire to be anything other than successfully amusing.