Known as the French Hitchcock, Chabrol is the maestro of minimalist thrillers. He was among the first in post-war European cinema to examine not external horror, but the internal contradictions of the time, the battered psyches, and the social irregularities. In this singular portrait of a serial killer there is no trace of cynicism – Chabrol is an engineer of human nature who builds tension from the obvious.

They met at a wedding. In the society of a small provincial town, the schoolteacher Hélène is an outsider, and Popaul pokes fun at her city-bred quirks and her yellow Citroën. He, meanwhile, is a solitary, intelligent, middle-aged butcher who knows everyone. A platonic friendship develops between Hélène and Popaul, filled with everyday rituals day by day. Nothing is happening between them, it seems – and yet, one by one, women are being murdered in their midst. And, unexpectedly, Hélène finds herself more deeply involved in the investigation than she had imagined.

Those familiar with Chabrol will tell you: his films always open and close on a river, and at least once a character will have a meal. This film is no exception. Yet contrary to the visual sadism of 21st-century cinema, what interests Chabrol is human horror, and in the film everything seems clear: the discarded lighter, the suspiciously familiar murder sites, the anatomical knowledge, the absence of an alibi. What holds the viewer in a state of suspense is the precision with which he spins the story of the solitary figures portrayed by Stéphane Audran and Jean Yanne, moving away from the banal “victim” and “perpetrator” scheme. However gruesome it may sound in the context of the plot, these are two people who can be themselves in each other’s company.