The BFI's Claude Chabrol season this autumn includes a film made for queer audiences

The BFI is dedicating its autumn season to Claude Chabrol and one of its films was made for queer audiences

BFI Southbank's Claude Chabrol season runs from 1 September to 6 October 2026. Twenty films. A rerelease of La Femme infidèle in cinemas. And Les Biches, a 1968 film that has divided queer audiences since it was made.

Claude Chabrol is the French New Wave director most people can name the least work by. That is the argument season curator Catherine Wheatley makes. Over some 50 years and 80-odd films, he mapped the darkness beneath respectable surfaces with wit, precision and what Wheatley describes as a peculiar cocktail of the mundane and murderous. Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook both cite him as a key influence on their work. Bong has specifically cited Que la bête meure as an influence on Parasite. La Rupture is frequently compared to Park Chan-wook's Decision to Leave. The BFI thinks it is time to look properly.

Les Biches is the film Flicker is most interested in. Frédérique, a bored bisexual socialite, picks up a young female street artist called Why on a Paris bridge and takes her to her villa in Saint Tropez. A handsome architect complicates things. Stéphane Audran won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at Berlin for her performance. Chabrol later admitted he included the lesbian plot specifically to help the film at the box office. That admission is part of what makes queer responses to the film so divided. Some find it exploitative. Others find it essential regardless of its origins. It is being acquired by BFI Distribution and available for cinemas to book alongside the season.

La Femme infidèle, the 1969 film starring Stéphane Audran and Michel Bouquet, gets a full theatrical rerelease in UK and Ireland cinemas from 11 September. It traces the fallout from a husband's discovery of his wife's affair and his quiet, devastating act of revenge. It has recently been remade as Minotaur by Russian auteur Andrey Zvyagintsev.

Other films in the season include Le Boucher, Chabrol's 1970 film in which a schoolteacher and a butcher strike up a tender, tentative friendship in a village unsettled by murder. Story of Women, featuring Isabelle Huppert as a working-class woman performing abortions under the German occupation. La Cérémonie from 1995, in which class resentment simmers until it doesn't. And Que la bête meure, cited by Bong Joon Ho as a key influence on Parasite.

Chabrol's daughter Cécile Maistre-Chabrol will introduce two of her father's films at BFI Southbank: The Swindle on 2 October and The Girl Cut in Two on 6 October. Events include a season introduction by Wheatley on 1 September, a Philosophical Screens event on Le Boucher on 9 September, and a panel on Chabrol's dangerous women on 23 September with filmmaker Prano Bailey-Bond, film scholar Virginie Sélavy and Wheatley.

Ten titles will be available on BFI Player from 7 September: Que la bête meure, Le Boucher, Cop au Vin, Inspector Lavardin, Betty, L'Enfer, The Swindle, The Colour of Lies and Merci Pour Le Chocolat. La Femme infidèle follows on 2 October. Blu-ray releases follow in 2027.

Elements of Crime go on sale to BFI Patrons on 3 August, Members on 4 August and General Sale on 6 August.

Tickets for Claude Chabrol: https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/