higgies
For the first time in years I thought about this film today. I remember seeing it with my mother who thought it was only appropriate that Pomme's experience of sex outside marriage should have the result it did. I thought the whole thing was bit over the top at the time but in retrospect I think it makes sense, given the sort of girl she was that she would have a breakdown, given that she took the whole affair far more seriously than he did. In retrospect, I think it was actually a rather moving and touching experience, despite my hardened cynicism at the age of 20 when I thought I knew so much more about relationships than I really did. There's a bit of Pomme in most young women, I expect.
writers_reign
To revisit this exquisite performance from Isabelle Huppert is to forgive her the sleaziness of some of her recent choices. Like the other posters I have just read here this film - or rather this performance - has remained vivid in my memory since I saw it first on television some years ago. I bought the DVD in Paris last March and have just got around to playing it. Unfortunately it is offered without subtitles but dubbed into several languages so that any non-French speakers who have yet to see it will almost certainly lose out. There's one semi major hurdle to get over but when and if that is accomplished this is a semi-masterpiece. The film was made in 1977 and there is nothing to say that it is not also set at that time yet we have a pretty 18 year old girl who admits to being a virgin and a courtship which would do credit to a repressed English couple of the 1930s/40s/50s rather than a FRENCH couple in the 1970s. There is an equal lack of Passion between Huppert and Yves Benyeton, in fact Kevin McCarthy lookalike Benyeton is SO wooden we can't help wondering if he is REALLY a pod who somehow strayed from the set of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers on to THIS set. Throughout the acting of Huppert is Magnificent and leaves everyone else for dead. Huppert is not only one of the most beautiful but also one of the most Intelligent actresses working today and the way in which she suppresses her natural intelligence to play a colorless, unambitious, low self-esteemed teenager is little short of incredible. Goretta has chosen to end with a shot of Huppert looking straight into camera with a completely expressionless gaze reminiscent of Garbo in the last shot of Queen Christina. Whether by accident or design it's a comparison that Huppert can more than justify. One of the all-time great film performances.
Framescourer
This is a lovely film, although just too far divorced from any engaging melodrama to really sell itself. It's very up-to-date, urban backdrops and the distracting energy of the soixante-huitard creating another layer of narrative, largely to emphasise the split between the educated Francois (Beneyton) and Huppert's beautician Pomme. It's spiced up with a brilliant turn from Florence Giorgetti as the heart on (see-through)sleeve Marylene - whose lifestyle will Pomme choose, loving morally straightjacketed monogamy with Francois or philosophy shunning hedonism with all its frivolity and heartbreak?Michael Cimino used The Lacemaker to sell Huppert to the producers of the ill-fated Heaven's Gate - it was Huppert's inscrutability in role that Cimino wanted to put alongside Kristoffersen's all-American hero of the latter picture. One can't help thinking that Huppert may only have one gear. With the exception of, in fact, a feisty performance in Heaven's Gate and a comic turn in Chabrol's The Ceremony, riveting deadpan is her modus operandi. Here in The Lacemaker we get a premium balance of an acting range controlled beneath a surface which is as much to stop her passion bursting forth as to portray the modesty of her character. It's as good as it gets, but that's very good. 5/10
ctarlen
This film is about class, pure and simple. The shy Hubert comes from a lower class than her male lover. He can't accept her because she's not an intellectual like he is. He can't appreciate her quiet beauty because it is a nonverbal beauty, and he lives in a world of words and books.Hubert's performance is wonderful.
AD
