If the director wasn't Claude Chabrol, I'm not sure this picture would have been released. It's a mystery story with a rather common theme. Ordinary man meets strange girl with secrets and his values tend to change in dangerous ways, because of the passion.<br /><br />But the acting alienates the viewer. The dialog and the facial expressions don't mix together and you can't take the theme seriously. That's a problem in many French movies and not at least those of Chabrol. Maybe it's because one is too used to American actor manners, but I'm not sure that's really the problem here.<br /><br />Passions can be boring and this is unfortunately an example.