Ophélia

Claude Chabrol (Le Boucher) directs the inspired-by-Shakespeare cinematic gem Ophélia, starring Alida Valli (The Third Man). Ivan (André Jocelyn, Les Cousins), a high-strung and intense young man of means, suspecting that his mother, Claudia (Valli), and Uncle Adrian (Claude Cerval, Belle de Jour) are responsible for the death of his father, sets out to reveal their foul deed. Imagining himself a modern day Hamlet, Ivan goes about wooing Lucy (Juliette Mayniel, Eyes Without a Face), the beautiful daughter of his parents’ groundskeeper, convincing her to become the de facto Ophelia of the piece. Concocting a clever ruse to unmask the accused, Ivan’s fever dream of revenge takes a unexpected turn in Ophélia, Claude Chabrol’s witty and darkly comic reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s classic tragedy, Hamlet. Ophélia, directed by Claude Chabrol from a screenplay by Chabrol, Paul Gégauff and Martial Matthieu, features stark black & white cinematography courtesy of Jean Rabier (Chabrol’s Le Boucher and Madame Bovary, Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Agnès Varda’s Cleo from 5 to 7) and a haunting score by Pierre Jansen (Le Boucher, The Lacemaker).