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Diabolique (1996 film)

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Diabolique
Theatrical release poster
Directed byJeremiah Chechik
Screenplay byHenri-Georges Clouzot
Don Roos
Based onShe Who Was No More (Celle qui n'était plus)
1952 novel
by Boileau-Narcejac
Produced byJames G. Robinson
Marvin Worth
Starring
CinematographyPeter James
Edited byCarol Littleton
Music byRandy Edelman
Production
company
Distributed byWarner Bros.
Release date
  • March 22, 1996 (1996-03-22)
Running time
107 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$45 million
Box office$62.4 million

Diabolique is a 1996 American psychological thriller film directed by Jeremiah Chechik, starring Sharon Stone, Isabelle Adjani, Chazz Palminteri, and Kathy Bates. The plot follows the wife and mistress of an abusive schoolmaster who find themselves stalked by an unknown assailant after murdering the schoolmaster and disposing of his body.

The film is a remake of the French film Les Diaboliques (1955) directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, which was based on the novel She Who Was No More (French: Celle qui n'était plus) by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac. Don Roos adapted the screenplay while Clouzot received credit for his original screenplay that he had collaborated on with others.

Plot

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Mia Baran is a devout Catholic schoolteacher at a boys' school outside Pittsburgh where her husband, Guy, is schoolmaster. Guy is abusive to the weak Mia, a former nun who suffers from cardiomyopathy; his mistress, Nicole Horner, a fellow teacher at the school, is protective of Mia. When both women grow tired of his abuses, they collaborate to murder him in an apartment owned by a family friend of Nicole's. The women lure him there, and Mia drugs him before they successfully drown him in a bathtub. They wrap his body in a shower curtain and place it in a wicker box.

While en route to the school, Nicole crashes Guy's car in a pileup on the interstate, but the wicker box goes unnoticed by authorities. The women arrive at the school in the middle of the night, and dump Guy's corpse in the unkempt swimming pool on the property, staging his death as an accidental drowning. When his body fails to rise to the surface after several days, Nicole has the pool drained, but Guy's body is nowhere to be found. The women subsequently discover photos taken of them on the day of Guy's murder, and believe someone is blackmailing them.

After reading about the discovery of a John Doe in a nearby river, Mia goes to view the body at the sheriff's station, but finds it is not Guy. There, she attracts the attention of Shirley Vogel, a retired police officer-turned-private investigator who offers to look into Guy's disappearance. Nicole is resistant, and Shirley quickly becomes suspicious of the women. Their fears of a blackmailer are confirmed when Mia discovers the shower curtain used to conceal Guy's body hanging in her bathroom window.

Shirley confronts Mia with the accident report from Guy's car, and surmises that Guy was en route to see her in Pittsburgh on the day he disappeared. Mia grows increasingly paranoid, believing Guy is alive and stalking the women. This fear increases when two videographers filming an event at the school capture an image of Guy standing in one of the building's windows. Later, while investigating the school's basement, Shirley is attacked and knocked unconscious.

That night, Mia finds Guy floating in her bathtub, and witnesses him rise from the water. Terrified, she loses consciousness and collapses, apparently suffering a heart attack. Nicole arrives, and it is revealed that she and Guy had planned the series of events to scare Mia to the point of heart failure. Nicole laments, however, and tells Guy she had wanted to call it off. While overlooking Mia's body, Nicole realizes she is in fact not dead; when Guy realizes she is alive, he attacks both women, knocking Nicole unconscious.

Mia flees downstairs, and Guy tackles her to the ground in front of the pool and attempts to drown her. Nicole manages to stop him by driving a garden rake into his head, and he falls into the pool. As Nicole attempts to revive Mia, Guy pulls her into the pool and tries to drown her. Mia enters the pool, and together, both women successfully drown him. They exit the pool and are confronted by Shirley, who punches Mia in the face; willing to cover for the women, she explains it will help prove self-defense in Guy's murder. Mia walks away from the pool, distraught, and Shirley smokes a cigarette while watching Guy's body sink to the bottom.

Cast

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Production

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Filming took place in and around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.[1][2] The St. Philomena School was used as the primarily filming location.[1]

The 1994 film adaptation of The Flintstones features a character named Sharon Stone as an in-joke; that movie's producers later tried to hire the real Stone for the role. Since she was shooting Diabolique at the time, Stone had to turn the part down, a decision she later claimed to regret.

Reception

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Critical

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The movie was compared unfavorably to the original and received overall negative reviews. Owen Gleiberman graded the film C+.[3] Janet Maslin enjoyed "the spectacle of Ms. Stone marching triumphantly toward the Dragon Lady stage of her career" but lamented the heavy-handed script and direction.[4] Kenneth Turan compared the choice of Jeremiah Chechik to "assigning Captain Kangaroo to direct 'The Silence of the Lambs'”, concluding, "the entire picture has a clunky, hand-me-down feeling."[5] Roger Ebert recalled the Hollywood butchery of The Vanishing in a remake, "Why bother to remake “Diabolique” if you don’t love it?" He lamented the rewriting of the inspector from the original film, which inspired the creation of Columbo, calling her endorsement of the murder a "travesty".[6]

Stone was nominated for a Razzie Award for "Worst New Star" (as the new "serious" Sharon Stone) for this film and Last Dance, where she lost to Pamela Anderson for Barb Wire. Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade of "C+" on a scale of A+ to F.[7]

It scores 23% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Box office

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The movie was a box office bomb in the USA, grossing $17 million.[8] In other territories the movie performed better, grossing $45 million in total.

References

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  1. ^ a b "City lands good share of movies". The Vindicator. December 10, 1995. p. B5 – via Google News.
  2. ^ "St. Philomena eighth-grade reunion for class of 1975 a special happening". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. October 26, 1995. p. E-10 – via Google News.
  3. ^ Gleiberman, Owen. "DEAD AGAIN, AND AGAIN: 'DIABOLIQUE' DROWNS. BUT SHARON STONE SURVIVES." Entertainment Weekly. March 29, 1996.
  4. ^ Maslin, Janet (March 22, 1996). "FILM REVIEW; Forget the Cerebral. Just Kill Him". The New York Times. Retrieved May 30, 2017.
  5. ^ "Movie Reviews : 'Diabolique' Attempts to Replicate the Mystique". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved December 28, 2017.
  6. ^ Ebert, Roger. "Diabolique". March 22, 1996.
  7. ^ "Cinemascore". Archived from the original on 2018-12-20. Retrieved 2020-07-21.
  8. ^ "Weekend Box Office". Los Angeles Times. March 26, 1996. Retrieved March 3, 2018.
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