Mubi – Apple TV’s App of the Year – files Torment as part of its retrospective on Claude Chabrol. But recently, it and another streamer are slowly releasing Emmanuelle Beart films onto their platforms. Am I smart enough to know her appeal other than the fact that she was beautiful and was smart enough to say yes to every auteur who gave her a script? No, but someone has to be.  Because she, arguably, has the filmography to be part of the Rushmore of actresses who dominated French cinema during the 90s. One of these streamers should just do a retro on her. In Torment, Beart plays Nelly Prieur, the wife to Paul (Francois Cluzet, The Intouchables), a countryside hotelier.

Despite of Nelly being Paul’s wife, she does things like hang out with the hotel’s male guests like Duhamel (Mario David), who gives her expensive gifts. Repeat viewings make me realize that receiving random gifts from men is weird and similarly weird is Nelly’s enthusiasm in receiving them. The enthusiasm Paul perceives in her getting positive attention fuels his jealousy. The film’s key moments, then, show their arguments about his suspicions towards her being an adulterous wife. He also thinks one of the employees (Nathalie Cardon) is pimping her out. He’d just go on benders after ‘catching’ her, but the more he suspects, the more violent he gets towards a woman also losing her mind.

In directing this, director Claude Chabrol adapted a rediscovered script that Henri-Georges Clouzot wrote back in 1964. Adaptations like Torment hint at the temporal universality of jealousy and paranoia destroying people’s minds. What was true back in 1964 is true in 1994 and is true now. Speaking from experience, people put the ones they supposedly love on trial. It seems more true now that, in Paul trying to poke at Nelly’s story, he is the bad guy here. However, I’m sure that Chabrol and Clouzot probably looked at Paul in a similar light. The former, interestingly enough, uses his male gaze to separate an innocent woman from her self-torturing gazer. The sound design here is also great, where the voices in Paul’s head are Nelly’s seductive and sane sides.

This film’s original French title is L’Enfer, and anyone who took high school French knows that this also translates to Hell. The hell and, well, torment, that Chabrol depicts here doesn’t have an many layers as Dante does but the ones here suffice. The characters are in perpetual movement, coming towards each to either convince or attack. The film also has its share of B-plots. For example, Paul does create an establishment that is full of drunk and horny locals. It makes sense that he’s losing his mind but it thankfully doesn’t excuse his behaviour. Besides, a downward spiral always makes for good cinema. And returning to the first paragraph, Beart is amazing here, able to seduce with hints of contempt and fragility.

Watch Torment on MUBI​.