The Butcher

KYK

I know this is ~missing the point~ but if a man straight up brought me a leg of lamb like a bouquet of flowers, I would absolutely fall in love with him on the spot.

Thomas Ringdal4.0

Chabrol's masterstroke is to create tension in scenes where it really makes no sense for it to be present. Especially important as there's no real mystery to solve here.Throughout the film you're just glued to the screen waiting for something horrible to happen while the people go about their daily business.

theriverjordan4.5

Tenderness could refer either to affection or to a cut of meat in Claude Chabrol’s “Le Boucher.” There is a confusion between emotion and physicality throughout the film, which sees a provincial French butcher fall into an unreciprocated love with the town schoolteacher. While the village the two inhabit seems to exist apart from the world, under its cobblestone streets runs the muddied blood from several generations of conflict. This pours into the psyche of its inhabitants, including the butcher himself, who slaughters sides of steak with the sameness that as he would slice a knife into the side of a human being. And no force; ethical or moral, appears to interject with his apathy in this distinction. While “Le Boucher” teases from its titles and opening credits at being a schlocky and morbid affair, it’s something of a fake out by Chabrol. He inserts the idea of a gruesome and wanton world, only to undercut it with a different and altogether more nihilistic cruelty; born from a literal war, which casts its expanse of shrapnel within the souls of men. “Le Boucher” cuts; but not at the skin, the liver or the kidney. It goes for a heart, where there may or may not be one left to bleed.Where to Begin: Great Directors Where to Begin: French New Wave