Few people know this Chabrol movie and I agree with the precedent users:it's a work that deserves to be restored to favor.Almost unique in the director's canon ,it deals with the fantastic genre: only the final sequences of "la rupture" (1970) verge on it.Its less-than-critically-acclaimed reception led Chabrol to ditch that new direction ,which was perhaps too bad,considering the big amount of mediocre films he made afterward.
Probably influenced by American B movie "carnival of souls"(1962) and Louis Malle's "black moon" (1975),"Alice" walks a fine line that directly leads to works such as "Jacob's ladder" (1990) "a pure formality" (1994) and "the sixth sense " (1999).Sylvia "Emmanuelle -Krystel is not much of an actress,but it does not matter here because it's the atmosphere which counts:a green green landscape ,where Chabrol achieves the incredible feat of exuding anguish in the daylight,a gloomy mansion where,when you talk on the phone,your own voice echoes you;a strange library where the heroine finds a BOrges book-and it's no coincidence- Jorge Luis Borges's "ficciones"(one of his short stories is called "El jardin de Sanderos que se bifurcan":the garden with paths which fork),Borges whose spirit literally haunts the movie.The party where the guests celebrate "my sister's death" displays Luis Bunuel's influence ,notably " the phantom of liberty" (1974).
A very strange supporting cast "plays" with the heroine ,and their behavior predates David Fincher's "the game" by more than twenty years:Charles Vanel and Fernand Ledoux ,whose careers began during the silent era,Jean Carmet,Andre Dussolier ,playing two parts ,dressed in white then in black and showing one more time Hitchcock's stranglehold on Chabrol's cinema when he says "the world is a pigpen,isn't it?" as Uncle Charlie in "shadow of a doubt"(1942).
What will you find on the other side of the mirror? Sorry... of the wall?And when there's no wall anymore?"Alice ou la dernière fugue" should appeal to Chabrol's fans even if it's not really chabrolesque.
