Diabolique (1996)
2/10
Thanks for Nothing
12 September 2020
"Diabolique" starts abruptly. A pale thin brunette gets out of bed, goes to the bathroom, draws a bath, and undresses. While sitting on the edge of the tub with, what I can only assume is a pensive look on her face, she begins to breathe erratically and falls to the ground. Her husband entered the bathroom and simply stood over her as though he was waiting for her to die. Soon after, a blond woman comes to the bathroom to help. At this time I don't know anything about anything. The whole scene is just bizarre.

Eventually, we find out that the brunette is Mia Barand (Isabelle Adjani), the wife, the blond is Nicole Horner (Sharon Stone), the mistress, and the man is Guy Barand (Chazz Palmenteri), a philandering a-hole of a husband. The two women work together to kill Guy for all the wrongs he'd done.

My assumption is that they would reveal over time why he deserved to be killed. We got glimpses of his overbearing abusive behavior to give us an idea, but nothing to make him loathed enough to be killed (or maybe it was enough to be killed). Either way, when he was killed I had not a care one way or the other if the two women were caught or they got away with it. Nicole was a sharp-tonged strumpet while Mia was this doe-eyed lost puppy. Mia had a perpetual look of lost, confused, and in need of guidance. It was pathetic and annoying.

And because the writers were at a loss of how to advance the plot they dropped Kathy Bates into the movie out of nowhere. I mean literally out of nowhere. She heard that Mia was looking for her husband and decided that it would become her life's mission to find him or what happened to him. Her character made no sense as did much of this drivel. There wasn't a sympathetic character to be found and nor was the plot interesting enough to be bothered with.
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