Chabrol has found a rich mine of material in what he calls the "little themes," and [in La Femme Infidèle] he is working within a very narrow range, both visually and emotionally. However, within these limits, few directors are more skillful at using a sensuous cinematic style to suggest a world of minimal feelings and reified relationships. (pp. 56-7)

Chabrol establishes his characters as ambulatory objets d'art in luxurious settings. Everything is pretty…. [Hélène] harmonizes so well with the decor of her drawing room—her pale grey eyeshadow echoing the soft tones of the carved wood paneling, her earrings catching the light and sparkling like the television commercials her husband … is so fond of watching—that we see her primarily as an object in a perfectly arranged background.

In fact, the idea of nature morte seems to inform the imagery throughout the film. Objects are arranged in patterns that convey a sense of still life and suspended animation. In an early scene in the dining room when Hélène and Charles eat pears with a knife and fork and discuss some forged paintings which he had inadvertently bought, the image is dominated by a beautiful Renoir-esque arrangement of fruit in an elegant porcelain basket. Even the murder is shown as a series of formal acts composed within a frame, and the scene where Charles disposes of the body of his victim becomes imprinted on our mind because of the patterns the bubbles make on the blank green surface of the pond. (p. 57)

Chabrol's characters contact their environment as it reflects them—or sometimes as it encloses them—and mirrors and reflecting surfaces invest his films with a pervasive sense of the narcissism of his subjects….

Chabrol's preoccupation with surfaces serves to establish his characters' isolation from each other and formal composition within the frame tends to define these characters as objects. And to sharpen our perception of this, from time to time Chabrol introduces characters who are gross or grotesque in their action…. In comparison to the bland exteriors of the main characters, these jackanapes people provide a bizarre inverted mirror of behavior, almost as if they were in fact venting and miming the panic feelings that the main characters are unable to express.

In this context of narcissism and manipulation, sex becomes a ploy and a means of domination—and this is the way we see the relationships between Hélène, Victor, and Charles. We are never shown anything really erotic happening between either husband and wife or wife and lover. Hélène prepares for bed with her husband and walks seductively around in her nightgown but he puts Mozart on the phonograph and stares up at the ceiling. (pp. 57-8)

When Charles finally does kill his rival we sense that it is only because a prize possession has been taken away from him. In fact, it is the sight of a cigarette lighter in Victor's bedroom which he had earlier given Hélène for an anniversary present that seems to trigger the act. The murder becomes a gesture of reclaiming objects that another had snatched away, and the murder weapon is an Egyptian stone head that looks remarkably like Hélène.

Because Chabrol defines his characters by means of the spaces and things that surround them, our understanding of them is ultimately limited. His lavish and seductive physical style does not function as mere ornament—in his films style is the subject matter. Warhol is another example of a film-maker who uses this kind of style-content fusion. And as with Warhol, when resonance and nuance replace energy and force we have trouble becoming emotionally involved. On the other hand, there is something beautifully entertaining about a film which shows people as arrangements of light-reflecting surfaces, especially since other directors often make these same types into messengers for serious thoughts about the destructive bourgeoisie. Chabrol makes murder into a "little theme" by using a style which shows nothing more than meets the eye. Decor vincit omnia. (p. 58)