The story is as old as the hills in film noir: a beautiful wife plots with her lover to kill her husband. While Jean-Charles Dudrumet’s La corde raide (US: Lovers on a Tightrope) is an entertaining variation on this theme, there’s nothing very novel here besides a few juicy plot twists; instead, viewers are advised to expect the familiar, the duplicitous wife even sharing a name with one of the earliest such spouses: Cora from The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946). Bored in her marriage to Daniel Lambert (François Périer), Cora (Annie Girardot) is having an affair with the younger Henri (Gérard Buhr), a garage owner and car aficionado who’s attracted not only to Cora’s body but to her husband’s fortune. They plot to murder Daniel by giving him a sedative before a long drive, but when the opportunity presents itself and the deed is done, the body in the wreckage may be a surprise. Georges Descrières plays Lambert’s business partner Simon, who’s reeled into the intrigue against his will, and Pierre Moncorbier plays a private detective hired by Lambert to unearth the truth about his wife’s dalliances. Between Guéguen’s cinematography and Girard’s art direction, the film is a visual stunner in many places, the Lamberts’ elaborate mansion serving up a cavernous dining room (where characters appear infinitesimal in the distance beyond the candelabra), a roving camera that enters Cora’s bedroom window at night, an aerial shot of a dramatic spiral staircase, and multiple captures of Cora’s figure framed inside ominous hallways.