Claude Chabrol's Que la bête meure | The Beast Must Die (1969)

Que la bête meure is based on a novel by Nicholas Blake, The Beast Must Die (1938), which was translated into French under the same title as the film. Homer's Illiad is mentioned in this film, and both of course are stories of revenge.

This film is part of the 'Hélène' series, starring Caroline Cellier as Hélène Lanson and a Chabrolian figure Charles Thénier (Michel Duchaussoy), who is a children's book writer and a widower, and the Gégauffian figure Paul Decourt (Jean Yanne). The police appearing to be next to useless on the hit-and-run crash in a village in Brittany that caused the death of Charles's son, Charles decides to find the criminal involved and kill him. Charles finds out that a Ford Mustang with a dented left front wing was stuck in the mud the same day, and that the son of an agricultural worker who helped the driver out recognised the passenger as the female actor as Hélène Lanson. So Charles seeks her out in Paris.

Charles and Hélène become lovers, he asks her questions about her family and learns of her garage owner brother-in-law Paul in Brittany (with whom she has had an affair), and they go there for a few days. Paul is a highly objectionable, uncouth middle-aged yob who delights in demeaning people as a cover for his cowardice and insecurity, although he allows Charles to his workshop, where Charles discovers that he is selling his Mustang for an unknown reason.

Soon, Paul reveals to Charles that he has read his notebook about his ostensible new book, in which Charles makes it patently clear that he intends to kill Paul. Charles leaves, and there is an almost surreal sequence in which Charles and Hélène watch a TV newsflash in which they are requested back to Paul's home, as he has died under odd circumstances.

With the exception of Paul's mother, probably several people wanted the death of Paul, although Charles's incriminating notes of course pinpoint to his guilt: putting rat poison in his medication. As Charles is cross-examined at the police station, Philippe Decourt (Marc Di Napoli) confesses to his father's murder: Philippe has seen Charles as his 'real', spiritual father, so is he taking the rap for him? Charles later writes to Hélène stating that he is in fact the murderer, that he can't allow Philippe to assume the guilt, and is sailing into his death. To me, the jury is permanently out: this film has no closure, and we don't know who killed Paul: Philippe, after all, did produce the bottle of poison.