I've seen this film many years ago and have watched it again tonight. It is a good film about two topics that don't get much attention. We often see jealousy on the screen, but it is often weak, humorous, self-harming or benign. We see mental illness on the screen, but it is rarely combined with something like jealousy. These two elements together form a deadly cocktail.I say two, but here there are many small things that make this a recipe for disaster.The couple have, or are beginning to have, financial troubles. This adds a strain on even the healthiest marriage. - Nelly is a flirt who does things that make render even the least jealous partner jealous or suspicious. - Nelly is a liar. She lies about small things (cost of a bag, gambling), but it's enough to cause suspicion. - Paul is jealous and the thought of his wife with someone else burns him up. This is not a rare trait, but many jealous people don't have trust issues. They're jealous if they see something that bothers them, but suspicion and mistrust is its own disease. - Paul is suspicious of his wife and does not trust her at all. It does not help that Nelly flirts openly in front of him and lies to him. This fuels the problem. - Paul hallucinates and imagines things. He sees things that aren't there. - The lack of common friends or family means that the couple are in an island of their own misery. Paul has no one but customers to tell him that he's losing it. There are no parents or in- laws that could help him with his madness or, help him with the truth.The film is intentionally ambiguous with some scenes, the boat scene with Martineau which was one of the biggest catalysts to his suspicions and the loss of her necklace, which she did indeed lose, but we are unsure if it was in the attic or not. The fact is, audio/visual hallucinations, such as seeing something else on the projector screen or hearing voices from a sleeping woman are one thing, but actually picking up an item is something else. Near the end we see a really interesting montage, Hitchcock-like, a fast cut of imaginations and hallucinations. I wish the film had more of that. I'm disappointed that the film had no ending. It really had no ending, showing us a text saying "Without end" instead of giving us a conclusion. There is no way this couple could keep on going like this. The escalation from mere suspicion to battery and rape was quick, within weeks at most. This is an unsustainable relationship and an end, in one form or another, was near. It' just too bad that we didn't get one.All in all, a good film about an interesting topic or intersection of topics.7/10.

Although Emmanuelle Béart (Manon des sources (1986), Un coeur en hiver (1992), etc.) is particularly beautiful in this Claude Chabrol film and entirely compelling in the role of a free-spirited wife suspected of adultery, and even though her co-star Francois Cluzet (Une affaire de femmes (1988)) does a fine job as a man obsessed with jealousy, this turns out to be an almost boring movie.I think the problem is in the ambiguity about Nelly's infidelity that director and scriptwriter Chabrol relied on. Ambiguity by itself does not create tension. Artistic tension comes from an interplay within the mind of the viewer between an anticipated or expected result and its actual delineation. Thus in comedy we know that they will live happily ever after, and in tragedy, the fatal flaw will lead to something horrible. We can even know the end of the story, as in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet or in the Swedish film, Elvira Madigan (1967), or indeed in any number of war films, and still eagerly anticipate how it happens. In fact, I think it is always the case that we anticipate the end of a story at least in a general way: good will triumph over evil, the evil person will get his or her comeuppance, the British army will win the war, etc. In modern cinema this may not seem always true since the bad guys sometimes triumph, as in noire movies. Nonetheless I think the ending of such movies is really what we expect, the revelation of the essential unfairness of the world. It becomes then only a question of just how this unfairness manifests itself. As in classic drama, the modern comédie noire may be seen as a tragedy, with society or the meek or the slow or the trusting being devoured by the wild animals of the city.Regardless, here I think it might have been better to clearly reveal Nelly's infidelity or lack of it, early on, and then focus on its discovery or the revelation of a delusion. Obsessive jealousy is a theme that should work, but may be harder to put on film than Chabrol realized. I think too that the character of the irrationally jealous man be made manifest in some collateral way; perhaps we should see his insecurity before hand somehow; perhaps he should have some obvious shortcoming of appearance or character or there should be something from his past that leads him to irrational jealousy. Clearly an older man with a young and beautiful wife may be jealous in anticipation of the inevitable; or any man with a flirtatious wife. This is not necessarily irrational. Béart's Nelly reminds me of Brigitte Bardot from the days of her youth as in And God Created Woman (1957), a naturally warm and sensuous being, full of affection for others, very beautiful and impossibly sexy. The way Nelly walks and swings herself owes something to Bardot. The psychology of the Roger Vadim film from the fifties advanced the controversial) argument that a woman like that needs a firm hand. Here the suggestion is that the husband's jealousy can only lead to pain and disaster, and that the only hope is complete trust.What I am trying to say is that the psychology, like the tension of the film, seemed at loose ends. It is clear before we are halfway through that Nelly really loves her husband, the real question being, is he enough for her? I also think that Nelly's character should have included something negative in it (she seems a little too good to be true), something the viewer could relate to, perhaps a past infidelity or betrayal.Charbol is a better director than this film might indicate. See the aforementioned Une affaire de femmes (1988) starring Isabelle Huppert as an example of what he can do.(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)

I will have to disagree with other reviewers who wrote that «L'Enfer» is one of the best film by Claude Chabrol. For me, it was one of its dullest. Emmanuelle Béart and François Cluzet have made better movies too. Their acting is good but doesn't save the movie either. I gave it a 6, and I was generous.

This is a very good French film. The acting is very good, specially Emmanuelle Béart, she delivers. This is one of her best performances. Like many French films, the drama in L'enfer is very thrilling. A husband tortured by his imagination, a beautiful young wife terrified, its a great story. Very intense and delightfully acted.