the film was commercially unsuccessful in france (only 682,295 admissions) but was praised by critics. "the new york times" said that "in concept and execution, it is a film so calmly and thoughtfully perverse that it can have been born only in the unique cinematic imagination of claude chabrol." "time out" called it "one of chabrol's mid-period masterpieces, a brilliantly ambivalent scrutiny of bourgeois marriage and murder." derek malcolm wrote in "the guardian" that "chabrol displays an irrestistible logic and an ironic humour", and "what could have been just another thriller becomes... also a passionate love story, with its share of intense irony and a pervading sense of the quirkiness of fate." "tv guide" called it "arguably the best of chabrol's superb, hitchcockian studies of guilt, love, and murder among the french elite", and said that "michel bouquet and stéphane audran... give perhaps the finest performances of their careers."