With 1968’s A Woman Kills, we get a “lost film”. Though shot in the late 1960s, the movie never received a release until its rediscovery in the late 2000s, and it makes its Blu-ray debut in 2023.

Prostitute Hélène Picard gets executed for murders she allegedly committed. However, even after her death, these crimes continue.

Police detective Solange Lebas (Solange Pradel) investigates and consults with executioner Louis Guilbeau (Claude Merlin) in an attempt to gain insights related to the late Picard. However, Solange eventually starts to suspect more than meets the eye with Louis.

All of that sounds like a promising thriller, but the approach taken by writer/director Jean-Denis Bonan ensures that we get a tale that goes down an unconventional path. An extension of the avant garde “French New Wave” vibe, Kills largely eschews a straightforward narrative.

Oh, Kills ostensibly follows that trend, as it moves through the crimes and investigation in a manner that superficially reads as “standard”. However, Bonan ensures that the movie proceeds in a manner that makes it more impressionistic than anything else.

Unfortunately, Bonan seems more interested in random vignettes than a coherent story. Kills comes with thin characters who barely register and tends to feel like it goes for an “arthouse” feel just to fake an impression of cleverness.

In the hands of a more skilled filmmaker, perhaps Kills could’ve become a winning effort despite its lack of traditional storytelling. Unfortunately, Bonan just indulges in so many rambling, pointless esoteric shots that the end result prompts little more than eye-rolling.

Even at under 70 minutes, Kills feels long, and Bonan just gives us too little to grab hold of along the way. Perhaps it all those meandering scenes eventually went somewhere, I wouldn’t mind.

But they don’t, as Bonan willfully ignores the intrigue his narrative promises. Far more preoccupied with style than with substance, the film goes nowhere of interest.

Perhaps as a minor bone to the audience, Kills includes occasional voiceover to explain characters and situations. This feels out of Dragnet and seems both out of place and superfluous.

Indeed, this conventional touch actually reinforces the tedium on display, as these sporadic nods to conventional police procedurals highlight the absence of coherence in Kills. Maybe this “lost film” should’ve stayed that way.

A Woman Kills appears in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 on this Blu-ray Disc. Though it came with positives, the image’s inconsistencies harmed it.

In particular, prints flaws became a concern. While some scenes escaped unmarred, plenty of others showed specks, nicks, gates hairs and other blemishes. These could’ve been more extreme, but they nonetheless created fairly persistent distractions.

Sharpness varied. Much of the movie showed reasonably solid delineation, but more than a few soft shots materialized as well.

Still, definition became a relative positive, and I saw no issues with jagged edges or moiré effects. Grain felt light but fairly natural.

Blacks seemed generally deep, while shadows offered appropriate clarity. We found some positives here, but between he occasional softness and the print flaws, I thought this became a spotty presentation.

As for the film’s LCPM monaural soundtrack, it actually provided a stereo affair – sort of. Most of the mix remained centered, but exceptions occurred.

In particular, voiceovers stemmed from the front right, as did occasional snatches of other dialogue and some effects. Eventually, a lot of the track blended to the right without rhyme or reason, which made me wonder if a problem occurred during the encoding, as I found no logical reason for this choice.

Some actual stereo music popped up at times, and other components like fire spread across the front in a broad manner. All of this created a semi-mono impression that lacked consistency.

Audio quality felt dated and occasionally problematic as well. Speech varied from reedy but decent to rough and edgy.

Music also came across as shrill much of the time, and effects showed some distortion. Note that the movie used some elements clearly recorded in more modern times. While those showed superior reproduction, they didn’t blend well with the older stems.

Hiss seeped through at times, though not on a consistent basis. Given the movie’s age and origins, this didn’t become a terrible mix, but it came with real problems.

As we shift to extras, we open with an audio commentary from film critics Kat Ellinger and Virginie Sélavy. Both sit together for this running, screen-specific look at story and characters, historical relevance, cast and crew, thoughts about the film and a few production tidbits.

While we don’t learn a ton about the shoot itself, Ellinger and Sélavy nonetheless offer good context for the movie as well as insights connected to its period and genre. This turns into an engaging and informative chat.

We can view the movie with or without an introduction from Sélavy. She provides some basics about the movie and those involved in this decent lead-in to the flick.

On the Margin offers a 37-minute, 51-second documentary. It offers notes from director Jean-Denis Bonan, cinematographer Gérard de Battista, filmmaker Mireille Abramovici, composer Daniel Laloux and actor Jackie Raynal.

We get a look at Bonan’s career, with an emphasis on Kills. Though never especially tight, this becomes a reasonable overview.

In addition to a modern-day trailer - since the movie never got a release in 1968 – we finish with five short films. All directed by Jean-Denis Bonan, we find 1962’s The Short Life of Monsieur Meucieu (13:04), 1965’s A Crime of Love (6:53), 1966’s Sadness of the Anthrophagi (23:38), 1967’s Crazy Mathieu (17:01) and 1967’s A Season With Mankind (18:43). Note that only rushes exist for Crime, so Bonan narrates the incomplete plot as we watch.

As expected, these films tend to lean toward the experimental/avant garde side of the street, though they do get a bit more “conventional” as they go. For instance, Crazy Mathieu attempts more coherent narrative than does Short Life.

Still, all lean toward self-indulgence and vary from “borderline watchable” to “goofy as hell”. Whatever my feelings about the shorts, though, they offer a nice addition to the package.

An impressionistic take on a serial killer story, A Woman Kills feels too artsy for its own good. Little more than a collection of semi-connected scenes in search of a plot, the movie becomes a silly bore. The Blu-ray delivers lackluster picture and audio along with a good batch of bonus materials. Not much works here.