REVIEWED - THE BRIDESMAID/LA DEMOISELLE D'HONNEUR: FOR his 51st cinema feature, Claude Chabrol returns to the novels of Ruth Rendell (he previously directed La Cérémonie) for the basis of a characteristically assured and seductive psychological drama of amour fou.

We're in familiar territory here. Philippe Tardieu (Benoît Magimel) is a sensible young man in his late 20s, as diligent about his work as a salesman as he is in caring for his widowed mother and his younger sisters.

There is, as there has to be, a fly in the ointment, and it takes the attractive form of Senta (Laura Smet), one of the bridesmaids at the wedding of one of his sisters.

While it can be safely said of Philippe that what you see is what you get, there's something about Senta which suggests that there's much more to her than meets the eye. She recounts an exotic personal history to Philippe - of an Icelandic mother who died in childbirth, a mercenary, tango-dancing stepmother, and getting bit parts in movies with John Malkovich and Woody Allen.

Opposites attract, however, and Philippe's orderly world is turned upside down as he embarks on a passionate sexual relationship with Senta, who believes they were destined for each other. Chabrol's amusingly sly movie references take on a sinister tone when the screenplay evokes a famous plotline from Hitchcock, the subject of a landmark study by Chabrol and Eric Rohmer when they were film critics in the late 1950s.

Adeptly establishing and sustaining an intriguing atmosphere, Chabrol acutely observes the potentially fatal attraction of his young protagonists. The movie gains in compelling power from the conviction and striking presence with which they are played by Smet, the 21-year-old daughter of Nathalie Baye and Johnny Hallyday, and Magimel, who won the best actor award at Cannes four years ago for The Piano Teacher, and is arguably the most gifted French actor of his generation.