Death on a Rainy Sunday

Class struggle the Swiss way, or what happens when a well-off family brings a working-class-evil into their luxurious crib in the form of a crippled gardener and a deranged caregiver. A tense home-invasion flick that grips you first with the house where most of the story takes place, and then with the excellent performances of everyone involved. In the first half, the film is very unsettling, because the family member in most immediate danger is the youngest (the little blonde girl), who’s subject to some serious psychological manipulation by the psychopathic nanny. I wasn’t expecting much beforehand, but from the first atmospheric scene it was clear that this would be a pleasant surprise. The atmosphere holds throughout and by the end it’s tense as a violin string. The fact that home-invasion as a sub-genre wouldn’t reach its peak until after 2000 makes this Franco-Swiss movie from the 1980s all the more interesting. It holds up against its younger siblings. (26/11/2013)