Claude Chabrol's Alice or the last escapade is a rare foray into fantasy with many of the signature elements that made this French filmmaker a consummate storyteller and creator of suspense. One night, the unhappy Alice Carroll (Sylvia Kristel) leaves her boring husband. Then her car's windshield inexplicably breaks in the middle of a storm and she finds shelter in an estate. The old owner and his butler kindly put her up for the night, but when she wakes up the inhabitants have disappeared and her car has been repaired. However, she can't find the gate leading back to the main road. She's trapped inside the estate's walls.
Although written by Chabrol himself, the film is based on Lewis Carroll's classic novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and Kristel reads Jorge Luis Borges' Fictions at one point. One could also establish connections with a famous Ambrose Bierce short-story and Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman. It's a far cry from his realistic thrillers but I think it's also his sense of realism that makes the subdued fantasy elements work so well in this movie. The strangeness of the movie comes mostly from plays on language – like the inhabitants who refuse to answer any questions – and old-fashioned camera tricks and sound effects. When Alice climbs up the wall, thinking she get on the other side, she discovers there's just more estate, or as a character tells us, "there's no other side." These are all neat tricks that fortunately don't require elaborate special effects, but allow the movie to explore concepts like infinity, paradoxes and the nature of time.
What makes the movie so remarkable, besides the strange concepts it explores and the bizarre situations it thrusts its heroine into, is that Chabrol never seems to be directing a fantasy movie. In fact Jean Rabier's luminous camera captures every surface and space with a decidedly non-threatening light. In an age when movies come out with preconceived palettes – you know a horror movie these days is going to have that sickly green hue – the colors in this movie seem out of place, radically so, and better suited in a drama. It's this sense of unfamiliarity that makes the movie more settling.
Sylvia Kristel was very good in this movie, although she was mostly a passive character being thrust from one absurd situation to another. I think Chabrol was more fascinated with the beauty of the sets than with her legendary body. Still, watching this movie, one wonders why her career derailed into a string of erotic movies. She had all the qualities to make it as a decent actress.
Alice or the last escapade is a frolic for movie lovers. There's nothing visionary about this movie: it seems in the 1960s and 1970s everyone was doing their own weird fantasy movie: Robert Altman (Images), Ingmar Bergman (The Hour of the Wolf), Elio Petri (A Quiet Place in the Countryside, Roman Polanski (What?), and this is just another addition to this whimsical body of cinema. But if you're a fan of artistic fantasy movies, you ought to watch it.
Although written by Chabrol himself, the film is based on Lewis Carroll's classic novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and Kristel reads Jorge Luis Borges' Fictions at one point. One could also establish connections with a famous Ambrose Bierce short-story and Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman. It's a far cry from his realistic thrillers but I think it's also his sense of realism that makes the subdued fantasy elements work so well in this movie. The strangeness of the movie comes mostly from plays on language – like the inhabitants who refuse to answer any questions – and old-fashioned camera tricks and sound effects. When Alice climbs up the wall, thinking she get on the other side, she discovers there's just more estate, or as a character tells us, "there's no other side." These are all neat tricks that fortunately don't require elaborate special effects, but allow the movie to explore concepts like infinity, paradoxes and the nature of time.
What makes the movie so remarkable, besides the strange concepts it explores and the bizarre situations it thrusts its heroine into, is that Chabrol never seems to be directing a fantasy movie. In fact Jean Rabier's luminous camera captures every surface and space with a decidedly non-threatening light. In an age when movies come out with preconceived palettes – you know a horror movie these days is going to have that sickly green hue – the colors in this movie seem out of place, radically so, and better suited in a drama. It's this sense of unfamiliarity that makes the movie more settling.
Sylvia Kristel was very good in this movie, although she was mostly a passive character being thrust from one absurd situation to another. I think Chabrol was more fascinated with the beauty of the sets than with her legendary body. Still, watching this movie, one wonders why her career derailed into a string of erotic movies. She had all the qualities to make it as a decent actress.
Alice or the last escapade is a frolic for movie lovers. There's nothing visionary about this movie: it seems in the 1960s and 1970s everyone was doing their own weird fantasy movie: Robert Altman (Images), Ingmar Bergman (The Hour of the Wolf), Elio Petri (A Quiet Place in the Countryside, Roman Polanski (What?), and this is just another addition to this whimsical body of cinema. But if you're a fan of artistic fantasy movies, you ought to watch it.