Demoiselle d'honneur, La 2004

Marta Barber, Miami Herald: Grips you from beginning to end. Read more

Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune: A superbly unsettling crime drama about a seemingly ordinary family, ravaged by passions that descend on them like a plague. Read more

Manohla Dargis, New York Times: In The Bridesmaid, the latest of his works to be released in the United States, Mr. Chabrol again takes up a sharp instrument and directs it at one of his favorite targets, the family. Read more

Andrew Sarris, New York Observer: Certainly, The Bridesmaid is the most compelling film I have seen this year since Jean-Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows. Read more

Ted Fry, Seattle Times: At age 76 with 54 films to his credit, Chabrol can do little wrong and pretty much whatever he likes. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: Claude Chabrol has a wonderful way of making audiences nervous. Read more

Michael Atkinson, Village Voice: ... a psychodrama of typically brisk efficiency and relaxed gallows humor. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: The film reveals its secrets slowly, and Chabrol tightens the screws not according to the rules of Hollywood suspense but with a cool, level gaze. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: It uses the extraordinary craft Chabrol has acquired over the decades to insinuate itself inside our psyches in unexpected and potent ways. Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: This 2004 French feature seems concerned not so much with the psychopathology of everyday life as with psychopaths who lurk behind the everyday. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: If The Bridesmaid is middle-drawer Chabrol, it's almost worth going to just to watch Laura Smet, a vamp of not-so-basic instinct. Read more

Rafer Guzman, Newsday: Like Hitchcock or Clouzot, Chabrol excels at building a sense of dread. Read more

Jack Mathews, New York Daily News: Smet, the 22-year-old daughter of Nathalie Baye and French musician Johnny Hallyday, has a hauntingly beautiful face and carries Senta's enigmatic nature well. Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: A prickly, twisted, mean-spirited, borderline crazy and highly seductive picture. Read more

Bill Stamets, Chicago Sun-Times: Entering his sixth decade, Chabrol remains a master inspector of the criminal heart of the French bourgeoisie. Read more

Dave Calhoun, Time Out: [A] curious, sexually charged but ultimately unsatisfying thriller. Read more

Deborah Young, Variety: When the master of French thrillers Claude Chabrol meets the mistress of English suspense fiction Ruth Rendell, the result is a potent if very classic blend. Read more

Desson Thomson, Washington Post: Chabrol arranges his story with a subtle, almost clinical accumulation. And it takes close attention to the movie's seemingly innocuous details to understand his deeper purposes. Read more