By and large,in my book ,with a few exceptions ,Roger Vadim's works have not aged well : "et mourir de plaisir' (1960)which was his first attempt at Gothic fantasy (based on the fact that a vampire does not have to be ugly and can take the shape of a gorgeous girl ) was going in a good direction.
He had all the cards for "château en Suède" : cinematography by Armand Thirard (splendid exterior shots), a dream of the cast : the young generation (Brialy , Trintignant,Vitti ) the veterans (Jurgens ,Flon and the wonderful Madame Sylvie) .The beginning promises a good movie: the sinister-looking servant (Daniel Emilfork,one of the strangest faces in the French cinema) , a skeleton in the park , a ghost (?) called Ophelia (Françoise Hardy , arguably the best pop French female singer of the sixties ,but whose acting leaves a lot to be desired),a trouble brother/sister relationship.
I must confess that Sagan never enthused me ;but with a director such as Roman Polanski ,one could have had something a la "cul de sac";but Vadim was never a great director : the actors are left to their own devices: Brialy ,Jurgens and Vitti overplay and are almost unbearable, Trintignant and Flon seem self-conscious and wondering what the hell they are doing here ,Sylvie 's got only to chuckle and to stuff herself with chocolates .
Was it a Gothic farce? A spoof on those movies with a place you can enter but never leave?(the average viewer has seen the final scene a hundred times or more). Black humor is terribly lacking,the lines fall flat , the hints at Shakespeare ("hamlet" ) ,La fontaine and Edgar Poe ("the cask of Amontillado ")are ludicrous .
Do not "step into this den of iniquity ,insanity and infidelity "!
