4/10
Maddening and utterly unbelievable
21 January 2011
Warning: Spoilers
"Diabolically Yours" uses the same tired old trope that dozens of other films from the 1930s onward have employed: a man wakes up in a hospital, not sure who he is, but suspecting that he's not who everyone says he is. If that man is the film's protagonist, we need to develop empathy for him. And the surest way to thwart any empathy is for the plot to make him a fool.

Why would a man who began by being suspicious of the story he was being set in, and who found more things to be suspicious of at every turn, keep reacting in the most foolish and trusting way? In the interest of not giving spoilers, let me just say that you or I, finding ourselves in his position, would've behaved far more sensibly than Alain Delon's character does here. The real fault lies in the plot for simply recycling a predictable story line and requiring stupidity of the "hero" in order to make it play out.

The film does offer two concession prizes: some appealing cinematography in the 1960s Eastmancolor process, and a cracking jazz score by François de Roubaix.
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