New Ripple

Leda (Robert and Raymond Hakim; Times Film Corp.) will suggest a question to puzzled viewers: Which swain plays the swan? But the English title of this French New Ripple--it's a long way from the wave--refers merely to a red-haired murderee, not to Jupiter's aquabatics. It may occur to some sufferers that Olympian intervention would have helped. For its last quarter-hour, Leda is a psychological thriller, set in Southern France, that is capable of holding attention. Before this, it is Director Claude (The Cousins) Chabrol delightedly discovering the color camera.

Shooting almost aimlessly, blurring or omitting his story's development to no purpose, Chabrol far too gradually sets up this situation: a wealthy, middle-aged winegrower (Jacques Dacqmine) has a corrosive wife (Madeleine Robinson), a beautiful young mistress (Antonella Lualdi), a pretty, restless daughter (Jeanne Valerie) and an effeminate son (Andre Jocelyn). He also has a chronic house guest: his daughter's oafish lover, played by Jean-Paul Belmondo, the slob-hero of Breathless and currently the dirty-necked darling of French movie fans.

Dacqmine is presented, without explanation, as a man totally vacant of will; for some reason he lets Belmondo shamble about his villa, bundle his daughter, drink his liquor, slop his food, and rant, while scratching himself, that the winegrower should chuck everything and run off with Leda, his mistress. But Dacqmine likes his vineyards, and his wife will not agree to divorce him.

There matters stand while Chabrol, with French economy, gets his money's worth out of his star. Belmondo plays a pointless breakfast scene, chawing food with his mouth open, plays a long, expert and pointless drunk scene. The story picks up when someone finally gets around to murdering Leda. A measure of the film's sloppiness is that it is a full ten screen minutes after the dead girl has been discovered before someone mentions whether the poor thing has been done to death by gun, knife, boredom or wild dogs.

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