Synopsis
The Swindle (Rien ne va plus, 1997) is a Claude Chabrol crime comedy you can watch online on iFILM. Betty and Victor drift across France in a camper van, making their living off small, tidy cons: drug a trusting businessman over dinner, lift a slice of his cash, vanish before he wakes.
The routine runs like clockwork — and part of the fun is guessing which of the two actually calls the shots. Isabelle Huppert plays Betty with cool, unreadable poise; Michel Serrault is the older partner who treats a clean swindle as a craft. Then a courier crosses their path carrying a briefcase, and inside isn't pocket money but fifty million francs that belong to dangerous people. The stakes jump, and for once the pair has to play for real.
Late-period Chabrol works here with a watchmaker's precision: no wasted scenes, dry wit instead of car chases, and the suspense built on whether the swindlers are conning each other too. The film opened the 1997 Venice Film Festival. It's for viewers who like European crime without gunfire, where the pleasure is watching two clever people try to outmaneuver one another. Stream The Swindle (1997) online on iFILM.
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