The blond is good-looking, maybe a little over the hill. She lolls on the bed. "Come and play . . . or I'll make you pay!" she says, licking her lips. Michel Bouquet sits by the window in misery. He's a small man, very neat, receding hairline, pursed lips. He doesn't want to play. But he does. The blond closes her eyes and recites her rape fantasies - old favorites, apparently. She gets to the one about choking. She asks him to choke her. Fade to a dark screen and the credits for Claude Chabrol's "Just Before Nightfall." When the lights come on again, she's dead.

It's often like this in Chabrol's films. His characters are the molds from which the French bourgeoisie cast. They're terribly respectable, they live in comfortable homes and work in well-paying professions, they present a facade of total respectability. But underneath there are dark passions and well-kept secrets and, frequently, the ultimate embarrassment of murder. They aren't killers; that's the whole point. They're people who commit murder to their own astonishment. "Just Before Nightfall" is one of Chabrol's best films on his favorite theme. He has, it turns out, a great deal more to say about his characters than we think at first, and after the blond's murder the movie proceeds through guilt, remorse and forgiveness - and finds none of them as enduring as middle class respectability. It is one thing to commit murder. After all, that could happen to anybody. But it's another thing altogether to do anything so vulgar as confessing to it.

Excerpt from Roger EBERT's review at the Chicago Sun Times located HERE