Le Boucher and Chabrol

A week after the death of the eminent film-maker, Claude Chabrol, I've watched one of his most famous movies, Le Boucher. It's not exactly a homage to Hitchcock, but the influence of the master of suspense is evident in a various ways, most notably in the appealing yet repressed blonde heroine, played by Chabrol's wife, Stephane Audran.

At a wedding in the idyllic village where she is in charge of a small school, she meets a butcher called Popaul, who has returned after 15 years in the army. ...