(Murdering the guy they’re both fucking. How sisterly of them…)
CAST: Sharon Stone, Isabelle Adjani, Chazz Palminteri, Kathy Bates, Spaulding Gray, Allen Garfield, Adam Hann-Byrd, Donal Logue, Shirley Knight, J.J. Abrams.
DIRECTOR: Jeremiah Chechik
WARNING: Some SPOILERS and extreme examples of sisterhood - straight ahead…
In 1955, French director Henri-Georges Clouzot released his thriller DIABOLIQUE. Revolving around a cruel and sadistic headmaster at an isolated school for boys, as well as the two women who share his bed and ultimately conspire to murder him, it would go on to be regarded as one of the finest entries in the suspense genre - right alongside Alfred Hitchcock’s output. In fact, there are those that regard DIABOLIQUE 1955 as even more effective than some of Hitch’s flicks - especially its sucker punch of an ending. As you can imagine, that’s kind of like saying that someone is better than Kevin Smith at dick-and-fart jokes.
I never saw the original DIABOLIQUE in its entirety (mostly the last half), but did catch all of the very good 1974 American television movie that it spawned, REFLECTIONS OF MURDER. Suspenseful, atmospheric, classy, and even more lethal in unraveling that famous ending as the French film that inspired it, REFLECTIONS was quite the experience. It made me wonder why no major studio had considered remaking DIABOLIQUE for the big screen.
Well, in the mid-90’s when I was still living in L.A., I got my wish. The industry rags blared that DIABOLIQUE was going to be remade by director Jeremiah Chechik who helmed Johnny Depp’s quirky BENNY & JOON and… NATIONAL LAMPOON‘S CHRISTMAS VACATION. Hmmmmmm….
Danger, Will Robinson?
At least the casting was impressive, which offered great hope. Sharon Stone, then hot off her Oscar nomination and Golden Globe win for CASINO, was to take on the role of the headmaster’s icy mistress. French legend and dazzler Isabelle Adjani would play his long-suffering wife. And the scumbag whom Stone and Adjani’s characters would eventually kill off together? The awesome Chazz Palminteri, hot off BULLETS OVER BROADWAY, A BRONX TALE, and… JADE. Okay, well at least he was hot off BULLETS OVER BROADWAY, which is one of my favorite films and the best of Woody Allen’s output, and A BRONX TALE, which showcased some of Robert De Niro’s finest work.
Anyhow, all that by way of saying that I really looked forward to a remake of DIABOLIQUE. Stone had already shown great proficiency at playing steely and intimidating (BASIC INSTINCT, THE SPECIALIST), vulnerable and complex (SLIVER, CASINO), and even dryly funny (INTERSECTION). With her in the lead of DIABOLIQUE, sure-to-be able support from the talented Adjani and Palminteri, and source material as flawless as the original film, how could anything go wrong?
We’ll discuss that in the BUT, SERIOUSLY part of this review. Suffice it to say, something did go wrong. Very wrong. And it’s not the fault of the cast.
Anyhow, our story starts at the St. Anselm School For Boys. Make that troubled boys, as the movie soon makes clear. Evidently, we’re not exactly looking at the future leaders of our country among the student body. In fact, as mathematics teacher Nicole Horner (Sharon Stone) acidly points out, they’re more like “the future Lee Harvey Oswalds.” Me-ow.
Turns out Nicole has a good reason to be bitchy. The headmaster of the school, Guy Baran (Chazz Palminteri) is a complete dick who: (1) serves grade-Z food in the cafeteria; (2) rules with an iron hand; and (3) likes to humiliate his wife at every opportunity. She is Mia (Isabelle Adjani), and is also Nicole’s friend. Which makes the fact that Nicole is fucking Guy even more intriguing. And the added fact that Mia knows all about it - but accepts it - makes thing even more noteworthy. Or just very European.
Now is it clear to you folks why the students at the school are troubled? Apparently, the teaching staff is far more occupied with their sex lives than the curriculum.
This doesn’t stop Nicole and Mia from schtupping Guy. Separately, of course. I don’t think Mia is forward-thinking enough to try a threesome with her husband and friend. Her loss, I guess. Anyhow, it’s obvious that while these women can’t stand Guy, they obviously love his dick, which must be the size of the Empire State Building. That would be the only logical reason these chicks would continue to put up with his douchebagery. Anything smaller than that would just not be worth the trouble.
But I digress… yet again. Anyhow, the last straw is when Guy forces Mia to down some slop at the lunch table. “Go ahead. Swallow it. Swallow it for once in your life…” coos the sleazy guy. I half-expected one of the other teachers to lean forward and ask, “I’m sorry, but are we still talking about food, here?” Fortunately, Nicole is actually a decent person under all that icy sarcasm - and accidentally-on-purpose pours a shitload of salt all over the slop that Mia is enduring. Which prevents Guy from forcing Mia to swallow it even further. But that smirk on his face indicates she’ll be swallowing something else that night: a nice little delicacy called Tube Steak. Italian Tube Steak is the best, closely followed by Irish. Then German. Well, actually, maybe Norwegian. Then there’s Hungarian, which is really…
Wait… where was I? Oh, yeah… enough about Tube Steaks. Anyone who’s seen the original DIABOLIQUE or REFLECTIONS OF MURDER knows that Mia and Nicole go on to kill Guy by drowning him in a bathtub - and then dumping his body into the school swimming pool, which has been closed for years. They hope to make it look like Guy got too drunk and fell into the slimy water - and drowned. Too bad these chicks are more of a literary type of broad, because if they would have watched even just one episode of CSI, they would’ve realized they have a greater chance of finding oil on school property than passing off Guy’s death as accidental. But that’s their problem…
At any rate, our two murderous heroines go on about their daily business pretending to be shocked about Guy’s disappearance. All the while patiently waiting for his body to float to the surface of the pool - so they can act all “heartbroken” and “sad.” Let me just say right now that I, for one, would like to see Nicole try to pull off “heartbroken” and “sad.” The woman has more acid in her system than someone who just got done eating ten bowls of jalapeno peppers, for God’s sake.
It won’t come as a great surprise that Guy’s body never surfaces. And when Mia and Nicole have the pool drained as an excuse find Nicole’s keys, they discover it’s empty. As in, there’s no dead body at the bottom. Just a lot of dead leaves, slime, and what looks like a bunch of used condoms. But no Guy - dead or otherwise.
Oh. Shit.
To make matters worse, the following strange things happen: (1) the suit that Guy wore when Nicole and Mia drowned him turns up from the dry cleaners; (2) a roll of film found in the suit pocket shows pictures of our heroines lugging the trunk with Guy’s body in it; (3) the shower curtain they wrapped Guy’s body in turns up in Mia’s bathroom, nearly giving her a heart attack; (4) the two video geeks (Donal Logue and J.J. Abrams) shooting promotional footage for the school catch someone on tape who looks like Guy standing in one of the upper windows; and (5) a nosy detective named Shirley Vogel (Kathy Bates) shows up and starts inquiring about Guy’s disappearance. This last bit, as you can imagine, is received by Mia and Nicole the same way they would receive the news that they both contracted gonorrhea from Guy.
Is Guy still alive? Or did someone steal his body? If so, who is it? Who saw Mia and Nicole dump the body? One of the students? One of the staff? Is someone going to blackmail them soon? Or are they going to die next? Has Guy’s ghost returned from the dead for revenge? Will Shirley discover what Nicole and Mia did? Will they confess? Or will they continue to try to tap-dance around the fact that something very, very fucked-up is going on in their midst? Will they end up killing Shirley, too? Is someone else pulling the strings? Are Sharon Stone and Isabelle Adjani really that fucking gorgeous? And why does Chazz Palminteri get to be the lucky schlub who schtups both of them.
It’s all so diabolical. So very diabolical, I tell you. Ahem.
BUT, SERIOUSLY: I mentioned above that something went wrong in planning the remake of DIABOLIQUE 1955, a film so perfect a thriller that when that famous ending came along, you just couldn’t believe you never saw it coming. Like I wrote earlier, I’ve only seen the last half of the original film, but that was enough to sell me on it. And REFLECTIONS OF MURDER was a more-than-worthy American TV remake that actually improved upon that classic ending by making it even more sinister and ominous.
So what went wrong? With a cast like Sharon Stone, Isabelle Adjani, Chazz Palminteri, and Kathy Bates, how could anything fail?
Well, for starters, you can start by hiring a director who has experience in directing thrillers. No disrespect intended to Jeremiah Chechik, but while I love BENNY & JOON and have been amused by NATIONAL LAMPOON’S CHRISTMAS VACATION on occasion, they are a far cry from the sinister and ominous world that DIABOLIQUE inhabits. The film needed the assured touch of a born purveyor of suspense. I can only imagine what someone like Phillip Noyce (SLIVER, PATRIOT GAMES, THE BONE COLLECTOR) or Brian De Palma (DRESSED TO KILL, SISTERS, OBSESSION) would’ve done with this. Hell, even Wes Craven.
To be fair, DIABOLIQUE 1996 opens promisingly, with a significant shot of the school swimming pool buffeted by a rainstorm. This shot foreshadows the sinister role the pool will play in the unfolding story. We quickly meet Guy, Mia, and Nicole - and absorb the twisted relationship the three of them share. As Guy continues to humiliate Mia, we slowly start to understand the women’s hatred for him. When Mia and Nicole begin to finalize their plans to murder him, it’s almost believable.
Then they kill him, and just when the movie should take off and turn into an unbearably suspenseful exercise in dread, paranoia, and fear like DIABOLIQUE 1955 and REFLECTIONS OF MURDER, it just meanders without energy through the next two acts and stumbles awkwardly to a thoroughly misguided revamping of that famous ending. It would be very wrong for me to spoil anything tied in to the endings - old or new - but I will say this: in trying to update the ending for DIABOLIQUE 1996, director Jeremiah Chechik and screenwriter Don Roos basically killed any hope that the remake would be able to even stand close to its predecessors. The biggest disappointment of all.
Speaking of the direction, Chechik works hard to create atmosphere and tension. For the first act before Guy’s murder, he more or less succeeds. After that, though, he doesn’t quite know how to sustain the tension. When it should be rising, it simply flatlines. And for a thriller, there is no greater sin than that. The mid-section of the film is simply too slow, even with the introduction of potentially-suspenseful plot threads as Kathy Bates’ inquisitive detective who quickly realizes something is very wrong at the school - and that Nicole and Mia know more about Guy’s disappearance than they’re saying. I don’t know what other reason to posit than Chechik simply was not right director for this film. Again, I would have loved to see a version directed by Phillip Noyce or Brian De Palma - someone who knows how to create, sustain, and unleash a suspenseful symphony.
The cast is good. Sharon Stone has some amusingly acerbic quips, and plays up Nicole’s hard edge without failing to also show some of her softness. Stone brings a larger-than-life quality to the character that accounts for what little energy there is in this movie. Isabelle Adjani matches Stone scene for scene by being the diametrical opposite: shy, tentative, and reticent - but with a backbone of steel when you least expect it. Palminteri is appropriately oily and cruel as Guy, a man who actually smiles when he realizes that he’s hurting someone. If anyone deserves a watery death, it would be this character. You have to believe in Guy’s hissability, otherwise Nicole and Mia’s motivations make no sense. Palminteri makes it easy for us to believe.
Finally, honorable mention should go to Kathy Bates for her portrayal of Shirley Vogel, the detective who walks into the scenario thinking one thing - then slowly realizes she doesn’t know anything at all. Watching Shirley slowly put things together is a pleasure to watch, and Bates makes the journey worthwhile, providing some of the little energy at hand. With her participation and the rest of the solid cast, DIABOLIQUE almost reaches the average mark. Almost.
Unfortunately, as a thriller, DIABOLIQUE 1996 is simply lacking. Despite a game cast that tries its best, the movie ultimately fails because the folks behind the camera simply don’t know how to effectively tell the story. For anyone wanting to see just how sinister and terrifying this movie could have been, go see DIABOLIQUE 1955 or REFLECTIONS OF MURDER, instead...
... you may not look at bathtubs the same way ever again.
