Le Garde du Corps

A light comic variation on the Bluebeard scenario: personable, plausible Sami Frey keeps his safari park solvent by bumping off the rich women he marries. The setting is Morocco, Birkin his latest victim-to-be, and Jugnot her hound-like suitor, who sees through Frey and is determined to thwart him. With her air of good-natured vacuity, Birkin beams her way through a series of murderous assaults ('Ugh, a crab,' she murmurs, crunching Frey's scorpion underfoot). The problem is Letterier, who seems more attracted by the unpleasantness of the situation than by such humour as may derive from it, and some bits are quite startlingly cruel.