A women’s issue

‘Chabrol’s second feature film, starring Isabelle Huppert in the lead role, once again draws on a real-life criminal case – the story of one of the last women to be executed in France during the Vichy regime’s period of collaboration, a historical era to which Chabrol repeatedly and obsessively returns. (The case study at the heart of this film, which sparked fierce protests in France upon its release, clearly illustrates why.) Huppert once again delivers a fascinatingly enigmatic performance as a working-class housewife who helps a neighbour have an abortion and soon realises she has struck gold. Whilst the business flourishes (and, incidentally, rooms are let to prostitutes), her husband returns from a prisoner-of-war camp. Having become superfluous both financially and sexually, he betrays her to the authorities, who make an example of her. ‘Chabrol’s finest film of the 1980s, entirely unsentimental in tone and masterful in its mise-en-scène.’ (Austrian Film Museum, Apr 2006)