Two things that are guaranteed to get the veteran director Claude Chabrol in the mood are a bourgeois family with festering secrets under their polished façade and an intense, unhinged woman, preferably with potentially murderous inclinations. And while The Bridesmaid (La Demoiselle d’Honneur), an elegant Ruth Rendell adaptation, comes up short on the former — this is not his normal glossily affluent milieu, and is perhaps a better film for it — in Laura Smet’s Senta Chabrol has found his most chillingly persuasive psycho-siren since Isabelle Huppert’s hate-filled postmistress in La Cérémonie.

Senta crashes into the life of the straight-edged, serious Philippe (the excellent Benoît Magimel) at the wedding of his younger sister. She follows him home and peels off her satin frock, announcing: “You are my destiny and I’m yours. That’s it.”

Alarm bells fail to ring for Philippe, who is transfixed by her morbid nature, savage passions and tendency to lie through her teeth — something he charitably puts down to an imaginative nature. So when Senta suggests that they each do “something tremendous” to prove their love for each other he laughs off her suggestion that committing murder might be a suitable seal for their relationship. Macabre and claustrophobic, this deliciously dark tale of l’amour fou is highly recommended.

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