General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Unfaithful Wife

The Unfaithful Wife (French: La Femme infidèle) is a French psychological thriller directed by Claude Chabrol and released in 1968, in which an insurance broker who discovers his wife's affair murders her lover and disposes of the body while the police investigate the disappearance¹^•². It stars Stéphane Audran, Michel Bouquet, and Maurice Ronet, and it is regarded as the first of Chabrol's run of bourgeois psychological thrillers¹^•³.

Key fact	Detail
Director / writers	Claude Chabrol (director and screenplay), with a story credit also to Sauro Scavolini⁴
Cast	Stéphane Audran as Hélène Desvallées, Michel Bouquet as Charles Desvallées, Maurice Ronet as Victor Pégala¹
Production	France and Italy; Les Films La Boétie and Cinégay; producers André Génovès and Georges Casati⁵^•⁶
French release	19 December 1968 per the CNC visa record; Encyclopedia.com lists a January 1969 Paris release⁵^•⁶
Running time	98 minutes (BFI); Encyclopedia.com lists 105 minutes for the French version and 98 minutes for the English version¹^•⁶
Key crew	Photography Jean Rabier, editing Jacques Gaillard, music Pierre Jansen⁶
Remakes	Adrian Lyne's Unfaithful (2002) with Richard Gere and Diane Lane; Minotaur by Andrey Zvyagintsev, which BFI reports won the Grand Prix at Cannes⁷^•¹

Spoilers

Plot

Charles Desvallées (Michel Bouquet) is a 40-year-old insurance broker living a bourgeois existence with his wife Hélène (Stéphane Audran), who is 30, does not work, and seems bored in their villa, and their son⁸. Charles begins to suspect infidelity during Hélène's frequent trips to Paris, where she claims appointments with the beautician, shopping, or cinema visits; in fact she meets the divorced writer Victor Pégala (Maurice Ronet) at his bachelor flat⁷. A phone call to the beauty parlour, where she is not registered, confirms suspicions that have accumulated in his mind⁷.

Charles hires a private detective, who identifies the lover². Charles visits Victor, presents himself as fully aware of the situation all along, and asks only for a civilized chat; after their conversation he kills him and makes the body disappear⁷^•⁹. As the police investigate the disappearance, Hélène gradually understands that her husband is the killer and that he killed for love⁹. Her first conversations with two investigating officers, one smoothly groomed and the other openly malevolent, are played as set pieces of tension, since her own behavior appears guilty and her details were found in Victor's address book⁷. Without a word said, the marriage reconfigures itself into complicity and silent forgiveness; the Larousse film dictionary summarizes the outcome as a crime that ends by re-cementing the couple⁷^•¹⁰.

Production and style

The film was shot in 1968 in and around Paris in Eastmancolor, produced by Les Films La Boétie and Cinégay, with Jean Rabier as cinematographer, Jacques Gaillard as editor, Guy Littaye as art director, and a score by Pierre Jansen⁶. Chabrol was a leading member of the French New Wave and came to be regarded as the "French Hitchcock"¹. Critics have noted Hitchcockian touches, including a nod to Psycho in the scene where Victor's body is eliminated in a pond, and a final combined backward track and forward zoom adapted from Vertigo¹¹^•¹².

Peter Bradshaw, film critic for The Guardian, reviewing the 2026 restoration, argues that the film resembles Buñuel more than Hitchcock: an absurdist joke at the expense of the French bourgeoisie, a "ballet of repression and fear" in which the opening depiction of domestic happiness is drenched with strangeness by the atonal score and by Bouquet's waxy, artificial smile⁷. The French critics' journal Cahiers du cinéma, in a February 1969 review by editor Jean-Louis Comolli, praised the treatment of a story without intrinsic interest and observed that Chabrol had shifted the traditional bourgeois adultery triangle so that its summit, the hero, is the husband⁹.

Place in Chabrol's career. BFI curator Catherine Wheatley calls the film the first of Chabrol's great run of bourgeois psychological thrillers, a cycle that continued with Que la bête meure (1969), Le Boucher (1970), La Rupture (1970), Juste avant la nuit (1971), and Les Noces rouges (1973)³^•¹³. The Australian Centre for the Moving Image describes it as the first of a trilogy on adultery known as the "Helene" series, all starring Chabrol's then wife Stéphane Audran and including La Rupture¹⁴.

Reception and remakes

On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an 88% Tomatometer from 8 critics and an 81% Popcornmeter score from more than 1,000 audience ratings; on IMDb it has a 7.3/10 rating from about 5,400 users²^•⁴. AlloCiné's spectator average is 3.9 out of 5 from 651 ratings¹⁵. Le Monde's 1969 review called it one of Chabrol's best films despite, or because of, its subject¹⁶.

The story has been remade more than once. Adrian Lyne's 2002 American film Unfaithful, starring Richard Gere and Diane Lane, is a remake of the thriller⁷. Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev's Minotaur is a partial remake or theme variation, which BFI reports won the Grand Prix at Cannes⁷^•¹.

Restoration and re-release. BFI Distribution re-released a new restoration in UK and Irish cinemas from 11 September, with the film on BFI Player from 2 October, as part of the BFI Southbank season "Claude Chabrol – Elements of Crime", which ran from 1 September to 6 October¹^•³. The restored version was also presented in France by Tamasa Distribution, which holds distribution rights from 2024, with support from the CNC⁵^•¹⁷.

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026