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| Source: Wikipedia |
There's this headmaster. He's a Grade-A asshat: a belligerent, tyrannical, spouse-smacking, booze-swilling misogynist.
Understandably, his timid little wife wants a divorce, so she can ditch him and keep the school. Understandably, he declines -- so he can keep the school and keep schtupping the sultry schoolteacher.
But surprise! The mistress wants the rotten bastard dead too. Together the women lure him out to the city, drug him, and drown him in the noisiest hotel bathtub in Paris. All seems well. Until the body disappears without explanation.
The resulting panic brings a strange cocktail of morbid mystery and surreal hilarity. Oh no, the swimming pool ate the body! Oh no, his suit returned from the dry cleaner, with the incriminating hotel key tucked in the jacket pocket! Oh no, his ghost is haunting the school picture! Oh no, there's a retired police detective skulking about and he thinks things are weird as shit which they totally are!
The wife/mistress squabbling sessions, always fantastic entertainment, get meaner and nastier. The guilt-ridden widow, suffering a heart condition, falls ill. Nightmares won't let her sleep. And a walking nightmare terrorizes the academy -- not the bratty boys infesting the place, but the mysterious figure stalking the halls late at night and pecking away on the headmaster's typewriter.
It's that kind of psychological thriller. A slower burn than those dedicated fireplace channels.
Finally, the mystery cracks under the weight of all the bizarre conflicting evidence. Out pours the shittiest, most contrived twist ever crowbarred into a serious story. I felt robbed. Cheated. Then the moviemakers stuck a cheeky warning label as the end card, not to spoil this movie for your friends.
Screw them. Five seconds of Googling can fix that. But I'll spare you the shame of knowing.
114 minutes.
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