Violette Nozière

It's pre-WWII France. Violette Nozière (Isabelle Huppert) is the only child living with her parents. She's a wild child. Her mother is angry when her doctor tells them that she has syphilis. She is able to convince that she got the VD from them. Meanwhile she falls for a stylish young man. She prostitutes herself and steals from her parents to give to him. She gives her parents fake medicine and then poisons them. In her trial, she claims her father molested her.

This is is a good movie except one thing kept bothering me. Isabelle Huppert looks too old. The story is based on a real girl who poisoned her parents at the age of 18. I never saw Violette as a teen. In fact, Isabelle Huppert looks 30 in her hooker makeup. I couldn't figure out why a 30 year old is living with her parents and acting like a kid hiding her makeup. I wondered if it's matter of the era she's living in. It's an easy fix if the movie lay out her age in an obvious way. She could have a birthday party. It throws the whole dynamic of the story and the family into confusion. The story really requires a younger actress to play this role. Otherwise, I like the performances but the age difference is really problematic.

In the early 30's, in France, the eighteen-year-old Violette Nozière (Isabelle Huppert) lives with her mother, the housewife Germaine Nozière (Stephane Audran), and her father, the mechanic of train Baptiste Nozière (Jean Carmet) , in a small apartment in Paris. The ambitious Violette has a double-life, working as prostitute during the afternoons, saying that she meets a fictitious friend, who would be the sister of her doctor. When she learns that she contracted syphilis from a client, she lures her parents, says that she is a virgin, syphilis would be a genetic disease, and they would take medicine. Soon she meets the pimp Jean Dabin (Jean-François Garreaud) that explores her, and Violette gives money and gifts to him every day. She says that she is wealthy, but she gets the money through prostitution and stealing from her parents. When she learns that her father has a dowry to her wedding, she poisons them, but Germaine survives, and the murderer goes to court.

"Violette Nozière" (1978) is the true story of a French psychopath in the 30's by Claude Chabrol. The plot is ambiguous in many moments, mostly regarding the accusation of incest. But the film induces the viewer that Violette is a cold-blood murderer, ambitious and in love with a pimp. Isabelle Huppert ii excellent, as usual, in her first work with Chabrol. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Violette"

The infamous mediatic Violette Nozière case that shocked France in thirties between the wars took Claude Chabrol to enterprise this bold project in late seventies, the wiser director hits the target off the bat to cast Isabelle Huppert to play the young criminal that fits perfect as teenager Violette, the screenplay was based upon Jean-Marie Fiterè's novel in accurate manner as expected by own writer, extensively documented due at its time Violette already had died and wouldn't possible any further information thru her.

Chabrol got replicate the tiny Nozière's apartment where the main sequences unfold, also several spots of period piece to shooting in external scenes, further exposing with accurately Violette's double life on Parisian flamboyant lifestyle at Quartier Latin and her involvement with the crook Sorbonne's student Jean Daban, moreover a possible incest Chabrol just implles it slight on suggestive scenes, due he never believe that his father had committed such outrageous crime whatsoever, an stunning portrait from bleak past of Nozière's family!!

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First watch: 2025 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 8.5.

In 1978, when Claude Chabrol made 'Violette Noziere', many people in France remembered very well the criminal case of the woman who gives the film its name. It had been one of the scandalous, passionate, and morbid stories of the interwar period, a story that competed on the front pages of Parisian newspapers in 1933 with the news about Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Germany, and which had divided the French public opinion into two camps, as no another sensational affair had since the Dreyfus case. The heroine of the gloomy story was a 16-year-old girl from a working / mid-class neighborhood, who had poisoned her parents. The father had died but the mother survived. The investigation revealed the double life of a girl suffocated by the environment in which she lived, considered a sinister criminal by some and a victim of social conditions and a perverse family environment by others. However, Chabrol only mentions in passing the media scandal around this case, being rather fascinated by the young woman's personality and also fascinating his spectators in the way he tells the story of the crime and the circumstances that led to its committing.

The whole film revolves around the heroine played by Isabelle Huppert. The script is quite faithful to the story, presents the facts as reported by the press of the time and does not try to serve surprises or insert speculative interpretations about the reasons for the actions and the psychological sources of the acts committed by the young woman. The director's attention is focused on reconstructing the confined and devoid of personal separation in which the Noziere family lives, the bohemian environment in which the young high school girl spends her time in the company of students, crooks, and old bourgeois who take advantage of the youth of girls in need for money or sensations. Rejecting both moral judgments and psychoanalytic interpretations, Chabrol lets Isabelle Huppert build the role of the girl who, instead of teenage dreams, plunges into promiscuity, and who travels from adolescent rebellion to murder with an impassive coldness. We don't find too many reasons in the film that would put us as spectators in the camp of Violette's supporters, except for the personality of the actress who fills the role with gloomy feelings and self-destructive tension.

Isabelle Huppert achieves with the part of Violette in this film one of the first great roles of a fabulous career. She is supported by Stéphane Audran (the director's second wife, whom he would break up after 14 years of marriage and many remarkable films in the same year 1978) and Jean Carmet, one of those talented French actors whom Chabrol was giving the opportunity of consistent parts even if they were not first rank stars. A special award should be given to those who recognize Fabrice Luchini in one of the first roles of his film career. The style of the story is interesting and elaborate, temporally separated frames continue visually one another, flashbacks and imaginary scenes (especially from Violetta's fantasies or nightmares) are interleaved nervously and non-linearly, but perfectly following the logic of the action. 'Violette Noziere' manages to describe the interwar social environment, with social contradictions, moral prejudices, inequalities and stigmas related to the status of women and the pressure of the press of sensation. The film also intents to be a psychological study into the motives of the crime. Here, I think intentionally, the answer is not clear. We are shown the conditions that can generate crime, but not the gates that open between reality and horror. Judgments belong to us, the spectators.

Generally considered Chabrol's return to form after a period of barren inspiration ,including his worst ever ("Folies Bourgeoises").It was probably her best since "les Noces Rouges" (1973) .Like it,it was based on a true story, but an old one ,for the story takes place in 1933.Violette Nozières (the first of a long series of lead parts for Isabelle Huppert in Chabrol's canon) ,predating the director's "Madame Bovary" ,tries to shun her petty milieu ,falls for a gigolo (Jean Dabin! the heroine mistakes it first for the actor Gabin),and tries to poison her parents (she has mitigating circumstances ,for her father desires her ).Stephane Audran and Jean Carmet provide good support as the folks.

In the streets ,the buskers sang the horrible story of the infamous Violette Nozière.