Acid Bath

By R.S.

LE TRIO INFERNAL

Directed by FRANCIS GIROD Screenplay by FRANCIS GIROD and JACQUES ROUFFIO

This is a nasty bit of French baggage about a pair of sisters (Romy Schneider and Mascha Gomska) who fall in with the insurance-fraud schemes of a provincial lawyer (Michel Piccoli) and end up in his bed. Director Girod handles the sexual passages with a cool discretion that contrasts oddly with the hot pornographic spirit he brings to the trio's murderous doings. The film's gruesome centerpiece is a bloodbath double murder, followed by an acid bath of several days' duration to dispose of the corpses. A few critics have suggested that Le Trio Infernal is supposed to be a black comedy, but the length and the detailing that Girod lavishes on this sequence dissolve that conceit more quickly than the acid turns the victims into glop. Since Girod's view of the proceedings is both slavishly realistic and entirely amoral, irony, satire and rage -- the comic artist's basic tools -- are not at his disposal. But the film is actually unworthy of even that much critical comment. It should not be reviewed but posted -- like a poisoned water hole.

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