Les biches (15)

A loose, gender-swapped riff on Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley, Claude Chabrol’s Les biches is an examination of the seduction of privilege, and how desire can become entangled with destructive forces.

Two women - one wealthy and idle, the other sharp and hungry - fall into a relationship over a winter in Saint-Tropez. But their intense bond is further complicated by the arrival of a man who enters into a fraught ménage à trois with the mis-matched couple.

One in a series of fruitful collaborations between Chabrol and actress Stéphane Audran – the couple were married between 1964 and 1980 – Les biches plays perfectly into Audran’s typical casting as the aloof aristocrat. The film marked something of a stylistic departure for the director too, announcing a new, more baroque register in his work.