Eine Frauensache

This is a true story and the heroine is not unlike Louis Malle's hero "Lacombe Lucien".They are too coarse,too immature to realize what they are doing.Lucien could have opted for the Resistance,but he's deemed too stupid by the schoolteacher and he winds up in Collaboration.Chabrol's heroine only wants to "help" her neighbors before she realizes she can earn a lot of dough with abortion.Chabrol watches his character as an entomologist,as she makes her way through those troubled times:the world has gone mad,and anyway is abortion worse than what the authorities are doing with the Jews ?Maréchal Petain's France was so humiliated that it tried to make up with it by focusing on "morality".

The heroine could make also think of Violette Nozières,another Chabrol movie which also featured Huppert.And she's also akin to Sandrine Bonnaire's character in "la cérémonie".All are women overtaken by events,all are victims of a well-meaning society,Chabrol's trademark. "Une affaire de femmes" is certainly a good work although it lacks the sweep and the directing innovations of his late sixties/early seventies classics.

This earns a high rating simply for the gritty, persuasive performance from it's star, Isabelle Huppert, who is called upon to be a mother and an abortionist, to be a lover and a murderer, to be a free spirit and a prisoner of Nazi tyranny; Huppert may never gain your sympathy, and doesn't play for it, but she should gain your understanding as she plays a true-to-life story of a woman severely punished by the French government for a woman's crime that the dominant culture can not countenance because of the political atmosphere at the time--all this, and it's a gripping story,too--but not at all a cheerer-upper.

When you have finished watching this film, you may find Huppert's character hasn't quite finished with you, an observant, quiet reminder of the consequences of our actions. Hers is a haunting performance.

Marie (Isabelle Huppert) helps women have abortions in Nazi-occupied France, which turns out to be an unexpected income. However, she was arrested and sentenced to death by the time's reactionary government, looking for public examples to give to the nation.

Marie Latour (in reality her real name was Marie-Louise Giraud), was the last woman to be guillotined in France. The film tells this tragic story with dry realism, both in terms of the dialogues and the era's accurate reconstruction.

The film was in competion at the Italian 1988 Venice Film Festival. Isabelle Huppert won the Coppa Volpi award for best female interpretation, while outside conservative Catholic associations clamoured for the film to be withdrawn from distribution, for Marie's desperate prayer before being beheaded, accused by them fanatic groups to be 'blasphemous'. The film was released anyway.

I'd like to focus on this film as a French film, not of the United States. If one has seen "La Chagrin et la Pitie," then one knows the legacy of this film. France was not perfect during WWII. Not everyone in France was part of the resistance, mainly, they were trying to survive. I think its an amazing film that sheds light on a crucial point in French history. Yes, it's about abortion and Chabrol does a great job ensuring his abortionist is less than perfect. That's a wonderful point he makes, that no one is perfect, not even the moral majority of the government. But, I come away from this film with the same questions that I get from "Lacombe, Lucien," which are: 'what would I have done?' And, please, don't Monday morning quarterback World War II.

With cool detachment and a subtle touch of horror, Claude Chabrol dissects the story of a woman who was guillotined during the Nazi occupation of France. One of his strengths as a director is that he allows the movie goer to form his/her own thoughts and opinions about the issues at hand. He is not a proselytizer.

The film covers a lot of ground: illegal abortion, collaborating with the enemy, parenting, marital communication, greed and a slew of other human weaknesses. All of this against the backdrop of an occupied France, a country who witnessed the horrors of WWI and never fully recovered, and whose WWII soul (what is left of it) has been torn apart.

Isabelle Huppert does a fine job interpreting Marie LaTour, the woman in question. Marie is not the most sympathetic of characters. In fact, most of the major characters are not "sympathique".(My favorite character is the prostitute Lulu, acted by Marie Trintignant.)

All in all a well directed, well structured film about a tragic period in the lives of the French people. But you be the judge.

Trivia: "Vera Drake" and "L'Affaire de Femmes" both begin in apartments which have the the same god awful green walls.