Based on a novel by famed literary duo Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, Henri Decoin’s Maléfices (US: Where the Truth Lies) is an oddly enthralling film: a late-cycle film noir with slight Gothic touches that verges toward horror in some instances, science fiction in others (note the extended flooding sequence), and starring a lithe cheetah that shares a bedroom with its human owner. That owner is the sexy, mysterious Myriam Heller (Juliette Gréco), a wealthy widow who falls in love with the local veterinarian, François Rauchelle (Jean-Marc Bory), after he answers a house call to treat her ailing feline. Myriam’s magnetism pulls Rauchelle right into her lair and away from his devoted wife Catherine (Liselotte Pulver), who soon becomes aware of the temptress’s designs on her husband. When Catherine begins experiencing freak accidents and illnesses, Rauchelle suspects Myriam is using her skills in the black arts (voodoo, for example), which she picked up while growing up in Africa. Covered with ivy and decorated with exotic artefacts, the ominous Heller mansion will remind noir fans of Norma Desmond’s home (and pet chimp) in Sunset Boulevard (1950), and Henry’s innovative, haunting score, sometimes more sound than music, could be equally at home in an Andrei Tarkovsky or David Lynch film.