It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Excellent but underrated film

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

This is one of the most riveting films I've seen in a long time. Isabelle is captivating, flirtatious, beautiful, and the girlfriend from hell. I loved the dinner date. What an amazing scene. Isabelle is entirely convincing in all her moods from sexually flirtatious to depressed to passionate rage. This film is a virtuoso performance showcasing a great actress. In addition to great acting, she is simply gorgeous leaving you wanting to see more of her and this being a French film, one is not disappointed in that respect. The way the story unfolds forces one to pay attention to every little nuance. Sometimes its a bit corny like when they zoom in on her when she first asks about the organ in the barn, but overall the directing, acting, and cinematography are fabulous. I highly recommend this. To me the mark of a really good film is wanting to watch it again and getting a different understanding of scene each time you watch it. In part this is to get the point of the story. There are scenes that seem to be out of place like the scene in the forest, but everything fits together in the end. The first time I watched it I couldn't quite understand why she was so depressed when she found out that the revenge had already been done, but when I watched it again, it all made sense -- to find out that knowing that it was all done did not make her feel better; revenge does not solve ones problems. But it is too late, she has already set things in motion that make the ending ironic and tragic.

French actor, screenwriter and director Jean Becker's fifth feature film is an adaptation of a novel from 1977 by French director, screenwriter and author Sébastien Raprisot (1931-2003) who wrote the screenplay for the film. It premiered In competition at the 36th Cannes International Film Festival in 1983, was shot on various locations in France and is a French production which was produced by producer Christine Beytout. It tells the story about a flirtatious and ambiguous nineteen-year-old woman named Eliane Wieck who one hot summer returns to her hometown in provincial France with her German mother and handicapped father. Eliane's provocative behaviour makes everyone in town notice her and causes suspiciousness amongst the inhabitants, but one day she is approached by a nice local car mechanic named Fiorimonti who immediately falls in love with her, and a relationship begins to evolve.Finely and engagingly directed by French filmmaker Jean Becker, this finely tuned fictional tale which is narrated by Alain Souchon and mostly from his and the female protagonist's viewpoints, draws an intriguing and multifaceted portrayal of a traumatized and truth-seeking young woman who puts on a facade, acting like a poorly raised child, in order to find the truth about her past. While notable for it's warm and bright countryside milieu depictions, sterling cinematography by cinematographer Etienne Becker, production design by production designer Jean-Claude Gallouin and costume design by costume designer Therese Ripaud, this character-driven story about family relations, vengeance and love, depicts a dark study of character and contains a cryptic and efficient score by French composer Georges Delerue. This thoroughly written thriller and plot-twisting psychological drama from the early 1980s where a French stranger makes her presence known, is impelled and reinforced by it's engaging literary narrative structure, substantial character development, subtle continuity, strong contrasts, impending atmosphere, French actress Isabelle Adjani's prominent acting performance as a bewitching femme fatale in a very complicated role and the fine acting performances by French actor Alain Souchon and French actress Suzanne Flon (1918-2005). An unsettling and diversely romantic mystery which gained the award for Best Actress Isabelle Adjani, Best Supporting actress Suzanne Flon, Best Editing and Best Writing - Adaptation at the 9th César Awards in 1984 and was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 36th Cannes Film Festival in 1983.

More an Intelligent drama, with some violent overtones more than the "thriller" it's packaged as. This has more in common with "Rashomon" than with the latest slick action movie out of Hollywood. Isabelle Adjani plays a young woman unhinged by the knowledge of her mother's brutal rape by 3 men years earlier, and she has built her life around seeking revenge. The film's most striking aspect is the use of multiple switching narrators, so we see the tale unfold from several points of view. Adjani, as always, has a tremendous emotional rawness, but for me the performance (and the writing) wears its heart a little too much on it's sleeve. I wish she wasn't so clearly crazy much of the time. Or that more people seemed to notice just how blatantly manipulative her behavior is. The pace is very slow, which worked a lot of the time, but I did find myself frustrated at moments. But all that said, this is an interesting experiment in telling a complex story, with strong performances all around. And if it occasionally falls into melodrama, it also is full of moments that are disturbing, moving and shocking.

The source of this film is a book of Sebastien Japrisot - a thriller author and script-writer who also directed a a few films by himself. After having seen the film directed by Jean Becker in 1983 I start to wonder whether it would not have been better in this case if Japrisot brought to screen his own novel.The whole film turns around Isabelle Adjani, By the time she made L'ete meurtrier Adjani was already at her 20th film or such and Truffault's 'L'Histoire d'Adele H'., or Polanski's 'Le locataire' were already behind her. Yet, she has in this film the freshness of a debutante and a sex-appeal that equals few films I have seen (Tornatore's 'Malena' with Monica Belucci comes to my mind). Adjani plays here the role of the victim and of the avenger, her beauty, changes of mood, suffering and mistakes make and destroy everything in the story and in the film itself.Seen through the perspective of almost three decades the story of the young girl seeking revenge for the rape of her mother may seem conventional and melodramatic. It is however very much into the style and approach not only of the classic French cinema but also of the literature - the characters seem to descend to us from the world of an Emile Zola, with their predestination of giving up to passion and with the tendency of making fatal, destinies breaking mistakes for the seek of love.If there is anything or anybody to blame for this film not really aging well despite Adjani's fabulous performance (seconded by Alan Souchon, an actor who seems to have all but disappeared after having made this film, and I have a hard time understanding why) I think it's the direction and the director. Similar material has created masterpieces if I am to think about films like 'La mariee etait en noir' - Jean Becker seems to have lacked the daring of taking a 'classical' story and using lesser conventional cinematographic means in order to make the story more credible. And yet, the film is worth seeing, even just for the pleasure of seeing Isabelle Adjani at her best.