Through a Looking Glass

Joy House. Cuckolded by an insolent Gallic gigolo (Alain Delon), the American millionaire orders his henchmen:

"Go to Europe and get him. Bring me his head. I want to give it to my wife." In the process, Delon is slugged, flung into a scalding tub, shot at, almost drowned, and nearly run down during a mad chase along the Cote d'Azur.

Delon keeps his head, and, momentarily out of peril, goes to work as chauffeur for a sleek, wealthy young widow (Lola Albright) and her nubile cousin (Jane Fonda). In their Italianate castle, practically everything is extraordinary. The cousin pretends to be the maid, although she wears Balmain originals. The widow talks to her mirror, and with reason. Behind its one-way glass dwells a former chauffeur, Vincent, missing since he murdered her husband two years earlier. Delon, who serves his employer unstintingly up to a point, eventually balks. "You and Vincent want to kill me," he whispers, embracing her. She smiles. "We're not the only ones. A couple more or less can't make that much difference."

Though this loony, spoofish thriller follows the vogue for mixing chills with chuckles, at times Director Rene Clement (Forbidden Games, Purple Noon) can't seem to decide which are which.

He nonetheless keeps the action tumbling in and out of mirrors, closets, mantels, trap doors. And sneaky camerawork by France's formidable Henri Decae imbues the decor with glittering menace. As the ne'er-do-well whose passions surge at the drop of a bank note, Delon is a rake smoothly handled by Temptress Albright and coltish Actress Fonda, who comes through as a sort of cheerleader turned femme fatale. Together, they make Joy House as sportive as a carnival crazy house, brimful of absurd surprises.

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