[La Rupture] is based on a thriller by Charlotte Armstrong about a woman, blameless in her marriage, whose small son is injured in a fight with her husband, and who subsequently has to fight like a tigress against the forces massed against her when her wealthy father-in-law tries to gain legal custody of the child. The French title, Le Jour des Parques, plays happily on the similarity between 'Pâques' (Easter) and 'Parques' (The Parcae, or Fates).

So, remembering the fascination Destiny holds for Chabrol—whether simply present, as in Lang, or intervening, as in Hitchcock—one sits up, nose aquiver with recognition, as the camera zooms in with awestruck slowness to the black door of a private pension which stands serenely white in its own tree-shaded grounds and where Hélène … has taken a room to be near her child in hospital. For here, unmistakably in...