Diabolique 4K 1996 Ultra HD 2160p

The thriller is set in a private boarding school that the wife, her husband, and a teacher—who is also the wife’s friend and the husband’s mistress—are trying to take over.
The wife and the teacher conspire to kill the husband, but the body disappears, and then comes back to life…

User Review

There was nothing otherworldly about their origins. A shattered personal life and a barrage of disappointments dehumanize and drain one of vitality. Yet not every woman mired in the quagmire of emotional turmoil is capable of looking as radiant and alluring as this dark-haired demure woman and this blonde predator manage to do. They did not seek such a fate for themselves; fate itself, in the haughty face of an imperious scoundrel—a husband to one and a lover to the other—assigned the beauties the roles of succubi. And the ladies did not resist it for long—sexual passion routinely spilled over into a deadly one. So dictated the great French legacy, only times have changed drastically. Tragedy has lost its dominant significance, while erotic undertones and hints have risen to the top of the demand.

In the unremarkable legion of remakes across the entire film industry, “Diabolique” occupies a proudly distinct middle ground. Jeremiah Chechik, who previously specialized in the entertainment genre, may well have wanted to soak up the exhaustingly alluring style of Clouzot’s original film, but he couldn’t. The era of *Basic Instinct* didn’t allow him to, and just how powerful that era is—Sharon Stone can tell anyone without much enthusiasm. So the modest director succumbed to the “lustful” trend, forcing Isabelle Adjani to strip completely naked in the very first scene without a word of explanation. Why stir up sympathy for the despot’s unfortunate wife, who has a weak heart, when one can emphasize the splendor of her breasts and the roundness of her buttocks? In the same vein—scenes of steamy sex between the newly minted usurper and both beauties, one after the other. And the director didn’t forget to emphasize the coveted stockings hugging Ms. Stone’s legs. The prelude turned out wonderfully, modern. Everything would be fine, but the title spoils it. It’s more like devilry unfolding on screen—there’s nothing phenomenal about the women’s conspiracy, yet doubts about the sincerity of their motives sneak through every five minutes of the film.

Again, in keeping with the then-current trend for erotic thrillers, the film acquired a lesbian subtext, which was apparently intended to deepen the characters, but the excessive glamour of both actresses worked against it. Stone and Ajani’s outward glamour hindered the development of their characters, and while the sincerity of their friendship born of misfortune is easy to believe, their relationship feels too slapdash when tacked onto the “body” of the thriller. By approaching the classic plot like Krylov’s hapless monkey, the director missed its most important part: there is far more boredom and unfulfillment in the heroines’ actions than there is resentment, pain, and humiliation. People kill for far less these days, after all.
And no genius has yet been born who can make sense of the intricacies of female logic. Chechik asks us to take everything on faith, whether by relying on the viewer’s familiarity with Clouzot’s film or on the charm of the performance. You can’t deny the style and colorfulness of “Diabolique”; the film turned out vivid and sophisticated.
It leaves no lasting impression, however. The plot’s disjointedness and the mismatched proportions of the gripping opening and the intriguing middle appear to be the inevitable price paid for the charm of the two suffering women, forced to untangle their own webs.
The tension throughout the plot is often replaced by tedious filler, and the detective story plods along more out of inertia.

If one were to categorize “Diabolique” as women's cinema with police-like certainty and forget about its outstanding “ancestors,” then the remake could be considered a passable success. But the strong cast, interesting innovations—such as Kathy Bates in the unusual role of a detective—and the production values promised more than just another woman in the deck of typical ’90s thrillers. The film’s fate was sealed by a lack of directorial vision. Chechik had to nervously balance classic tropes with postmodern liberality and diligently avoid overly intrusive associations between his actresses and Simone Signoret and Vera Clouzot. At best, he succeeded halfway, and Sharon Stone and Isabelle Adjani failed to measure up to their predecessors. The film itself turned out to be overly smooth and skirting around sharp situational corners. At some point, the director seemed to shy away from his own boldness in revealing the heroines’ seductive qualities and resorted to a straightforward set of detective tropes. The formulaic resolution that replaced Clouzot’s open ending drew a line under the reinterpretation. Another brilliant combination of eroticism with paralyzing tension and a powerful plot never materialized, which is understandable—Verhoeven is one of a kind. But if only for the sake of the scene where the female character in “Diabolique” kisses her accomplice on the cheek, it was worth conceiving and bringing to life. Such is the mark left by treachery: flushed, elegant, and provocative.

Info Video

Codec: HEVC / H.265 (69.9 Mb/s)
Resolution: Upscaled 4K (2160p)
HDR: HDR10
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1

Info Audio

#English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
#English: FLAC 2.0
#German: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1

Info Subtitles