Jean Becker is the son of Jacques Becker and the two of them were a spinal cord of French cinema for over half a century. The Beckers never achieved the level of global fame of the likes of the Nouvel Vague and subsequent directors like Audiard, Noe etcetera, although I remember Truffaut singing the father’s praises in his collection of reviews. L'Été meurtrier is a very gallic tale of revenge, featuring a femme fatale, (Isabelle Adjani), who spends most of the film wearing the skimpiest of outfits, and sets out to find the men who raped her mother, one of whom must be her father. In the course of her mission she seduces and then marries Alain, the son of one of the men she suspects, who is now dead. The tale is convoluted, and at over two hours long, relies heavily on the charms of Adjani to maintain interest. Perhaps the most intriguing element of the film is the way it looks at the legacy of the Second World War in provincial French culture, as the violent rape which is at the core of the film’s narrative happened in the wake of the war, at a more catastrophic moment in time than the charming village life of the late sixties which Eliane and Alain enjoy.
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