Claude Chabrol

Passion collides with bourgeois values in the films of Claude Chabrol, the founder of French new wave cinema. Born June 24, 1930, in Paris, Chabrol began his career with 1958's Le Beau Serge, which he modeled after director Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt.

Thrillers would become Chabrol's hallmark, but he also acquired a reputation for approaching his subjects with a distanced objectivity. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Les Biches (1968), La Femme Infidèle (1969) and Le Boucher (1970) -- films starring his then-wife, Stéphane Audran.

In 1978, Chabrol cast Isabelle Huppert as the title character in Violette Nozière, the story of a teenage girl convicted of patricide. The role brought Huppert Best Actress honors at the Cannes Film Festival, and the pair went on to make many more movies together, including two of Chabrol's greatest: Madame Bovary (1991) and La Ceremonie (1996). He died Sept. 12, 2010.

The Bridesmaid

2004 NR

At his younger sister's wedding, Philippe is introduced to the lovely bridesmaid Senta, and sparks of passion immediately ignite between the two -- until the haunting past of his new lover begins to surface. Suddenly, Philippe's steamy romantic affair twists and turns into a dangerous spiral of disturbing obsession. From acclaimed French director and master of mystery Claude Chabrol comes this love story entwined in macabre madness.