Eine Frauensache

Definitely one of director Claude Chabrol's best films, if not his best.

It is based upon a true story out of Nazi occupied France, and stars the incredible Isabelle Huppert (The Piano Teacher, 8 Women). She is supported by Marie Trintignant (Harrison's Flowers), who had her career cut short by an untimely death.

Huppert finds a way to feed her family. She performs abortions and rents out rooms to prostitutes. Everything seems to be going well for her, but her husband is not happy about the fact that he hasn't had any in 10 years, and she now has a lover - he turns her in.

France is now rid of the Germans and is trying to restore her morality. Unfortunately, Marie to be made an example.

Huppert was great, and Trintigant was also very good.

Isabelle Huppert portrays an uneducated but self-reliant wartime mother of two, who almost ruthlessly assumes the traditional male role of family breadwinner by helping (to use an old euphemism) young girls 'in trouble'. The film isn't exactly impartial in its attitude toward the opposite sex, but don't me misled by the somewhat presumptuous title: it isn't strictly a story for women, and despite the vocation of its heroine has little to say about the volatile issue of abortion. The focus is more on the plight of women as second-class citizens, forced by necessity to fend for themselves (and rely on each other) while their men are away playing soldiers. It tells a complex story very simply, avoiding any soapbox grandstanding but allowing Huppert a chance to invest her character with plenty of gender-specific spleen. The final impact is undeniable: it's an often powerful experience, likely to stir up plenty of talk and emotion.

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.

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.