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The Flower of Evil(La Fleur du mal)

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France · 2003
Rated R · 1h 44m
Director Claude Chabrol
Starring Nathalie Baye, Benoît Magimel, Suzanne Flon, Bernard Le Coq
Genre Drama, Thriller

When Anne, the matriarch of a wealthy Bordeaux family, decides to run for mayor, a corpse surfaces, publicly reviving dark family secrets. Anne must weather the political storm while the rest of her family reckons with their mysterious, difficult, and shameful past, stretching back three generations.

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What are critics saying?

63

New York Daily News by Jami Bernard

While it's not quite as satisfying as Chabrol's underappreciated "Merci pour le chocolat" (2000), it's still nasty fun at the expense of the upper middle class.

70

Village Voice by Jessica Winter

Not to imply that our Claude's gone native, but here his unabiding fascination with bourgie-style repetition compulsion bears some resemblance to sympathy.

70

TV Guide Magazine by Ken Fox

No one can quite capture that decay -- the guilty conscience that can freeze the blood of even the most reputable of France's bourgeois families -- better than Chabrol, and this the master at his best.

70

Variety by Lisa Nesselson

A terrific multigenerational cast brings a subtle, mordant, frequently funny tale of family secrets vividly to life.

50

New York Post by Lou Lumenick

It's a drawn-out look at politics that's largely devoid of the trademark humor that long ago got New Wave veteran Chabrol labeled the Gallic Hitchcock.

70

The A.V. Club by Scott Tobias

For all its aloof indirectness, The Flower Of Evil wants little more than to sling another arrow at the bourgeoisie, something Chabrol has done with greater flair on many other occasions.

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