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Once again veteran French director Claude Chabrol peers beneath the facade of bourgeois respectability to unearth the skeletons piled up in the closet. Skilfully adapted from a Ruth Rendell novel and set in a provincial French town, The Bridesmaid is a slyly enjoyable thriller with echoes of Hitchcock's Strangers On A Train. Benoît Magimel plays clean-cut salesman Philippe who finds his orderly existence thrown into disarray when he falls for the mysterious Senta (Laura Smet).

Locating the story within a recognisably everyday world, Chabrol maintans a quietly menacing atmosphere. The femme fatale doesn't appear for the first half hour, but through a concise sketching of Philippe's life - the ordinary job, the closeness to his widowed mother and jealousy of her new suitor, his responsibilites to his younger sisters - we understand just why he becomes entranced by the alluring Senta, even if her stories seem decidedly implausible.

"SEDUCTIVE SENSUALITY AND SINISTER STILLNESS"

The various shots of Philippe sleeping and waking give The Bridesmaid a dream-like dimension - is the young woman perhaps a creation of his imagination? Senta herself is invested with an almost supernatural quality: hiding out alone in the gloomy basement of a rambling house, she frequently seems to materialise out of nowhere. Newcomer Smet delivers an impressive performance, suggesting her character's seductive sensuality and sinister stillness. The fact that Philippe is erotically and emotionally attached to a female Greek statue which bears an uncanny resemblance to Senta, suggests that Chabrol's perverse humour is still very much intact.

In French with English subtitles.