The Breach (French: La Rupture), also titled The Breakup, is a 1970 French–Italian–Belgian drama film written and directed by Claude Chabrol, based on the novel The Balloon Man by Charlotte Armstrong.

Simultaneously, Charles' affluent and controlling parents, disapproving of his marriage, reclaim their son, aiming to obtain custody of Michel.

The concluding scenes depict Hélène, under the influence of drugs administered by Paul, navigating a surreal world, while the custody case's resolution remains uncertain.

While acknowledging that it has "many beautiful things in it", the "disadvantages and indignities are piled so thickly on the poor heroine that one knows early that the film is obliged to offer her vindication", which itself "isn't surprising or touching enough to transform the melodrama of "La Rupture" into tragedy".

[3] In his 1985 review for the Chicago Reader, Dave Kerr's resume was thoroughly positive, calling La Rupture one of Chabrol's key films of the 1970s and a "most audacious experiment with narrative form… which begins with clear black/white, good/evil distinctions and then gradually self-destructs, breaking down into increasingly elliptical and imponderable fragments".