"Diabolique" is not as bad a film as one would think, but it is not a particularly good one either. The film's most glaring flaw is that this thriller is anything but thrilling.
"Diabolique" is a remake of a 1955 French film by the same name. Set at a Pennsylvania boarding school for boys, this is the story of a wife who conspires with her husband's mistress to kill him.
Mia Baran (Isabelle Adjani) is the delicate little ex-nun who is married to the school's sadistic headmaster, Guy Baran (Chazz Palminteri).
Baran both physically and mentally abuses his wife. The cruelest treatment to which he subjects her is his rather open affair with the school's bombshell math teacher, Nicole Horner (Sharon Stone).
Mia, like the rest of the school, knows about her husband and Miss Horner. Dr. Baran, however, is not much nicer to Horner than he is to his wife.
A friendship of some sort forms between these two women -- a relationship based on the common abuse they receive from the man they share.
Finally, Horner has enough of Baran's abuse and convinces Mia to help her kill him. They devise a plan to drug him and then drown him in the bathtub. With much difficulty, they manage to murder Baran and dump his body in the school's unattended swimming pool.
But the body never surfaces. And soon evidence that Baran might not be dead starts to appear.
Is he still alive or does someone know what they did and is playing with them? "Diabolique" basically centers on this question.
With Baran missing, a police detective (Kathy Bates) begins snooping around, and soon she becomes suspicious of Mia and Horner's story.
The main problem with "Diabolique" is that it is just not scary or suspenseful. The film mostly consists of the same scene rehashed over and over again -- Adjani performs as a guilt-ridden and scared woman, while Stone is cold and catty.
There are some scenes that are supposed to be frightening, but they never really become so. Many parts of the film have the potential to be terrifying, such as the famous body-in-the-bathtub scene, but the film just never turns the corner.
These scenes end before they ever get a chance to get good, and quickly the audience is sent back to the Stone and Adjani business as usual.
While at first the ending shows potential to be interesting and the film's saving grace, it quickly turns lame and all too predictable.
The relationship between Horner and Mia is also difficult to swallow. Each seems to be the other's best and only friend, even though one woman is sleeping with the other's husband.
Not once in the film does this fact ever lead to any tension between them. Doesn't this fact bother either of them?
The film's performances do not help it either. They are, for the most part, bland. None of the characters ever extract any emotion from the audience.
Stone and Adjani do not make their characters likable or sympathetic enough for the audience to really care about. And if no one cares about the characters, then no one cares about the film.
Stone has her moments as the beautiful ice queen of an algebra teacher (that's a laugh). She has the sex kitten-from-hell routine down pat.
But that is her character's only dimension and not far into the film it grows stale. Her own outrageous outfits frequently upstage her performances.
Adjani's fragile, guilt-ridden ex-nun seems simply irritating. Like Stone, her character is one-dimensional, but at least Stone's is entertaining to watch at times if only for some of the stuff she wears.
Adjani's role as the constantly distressed poor-little-wife who swoons at the slightest thump gets annoying very quickly.
The problem with Palminteri's Baran is that he is not vile enough. Either Adjani's and Stone's characters are not likable enough, or Palminteri's Baran is too likable.
But the audience is never able to truly hate him and, more importantly, want him dead.
Bates does a good job with the otherwise lackluster role of the police detective.
"Diabolique" is a story of what could have been. The story is an interesting one, as the original is an excellent and very frightening film. With a better script, this film might have been a whole lot better.
However, the film only drags along slowly and its so-called thrilling and exciting scenes are neither thrilling nor exciting. The lesson learned from "Diabolique" is that some things are better off not remade.
