La dentellière

What can I say about this movie? It reduced me to tears in 1977, and again in 2003. It doesn't stand up to over analysis, but it rings so absolutely true... which has given the film it's resonance down the years. Isabelle Huppert's performance is sublime, and the last scene one of the most heartbreaking in cinema.

Beatrice is a very reserved and quiet young woman. Her friend Marylene is left by her lover and brings her to Cabourg (Normandy) for a few days' vacation. There, Beatrice, an apprentice hairdresser, meets Francois, a middle-class intellectual. Francois becomes her first lover, but their social and cultural differences get in the way of happiness.

This film is highly praised and indeed it is a pretty good film. Not my favorite, not one I am likely to recommend to others, but a fine film just the same. What I liked most is that the movie says it is okay to be an introvert, to be a wallflower, to be a loner. Other movies might have a shy kid breaking out of their shell, but here we have Beatrice who knows who she is and is (for the most part) very comfortable about it.

On the whole, the user comment by Dennis Littrell above is excellent. But even excellent comment may contain doubtful details. I do not agree that Pomme was proud and hopeful.

When Francois visited Pomme at the mental hospital, she told him that she had had other lovers and had been in Greece with one of them. This was obviously not true. Then why did she say so? Dennis Littrell thinks that she was proud. I take him to mean that Pomme would give Francois the impression that she was quite capable of going on living without him.

I cannot imagine that she could have such motives. Although SHE is the one who became sick when he abandoned her, and even so ill that she had to attend a hospital, HE is the one who "needs" support from two friend when he goes to see her, and HE is the one who cries (when nobody sees it). My conception is that Pomme even here revealed her good heart. She tried to make things easy for Francois – he should not need to have any feelings of remorse because of what he did to her.

Moreover, I disagree that Pomme's face in the last shot shows a vague hope. I think that it reveals the greatest hopelessness.

One Swedish reviewer wrote that things go bad when Francois lets Pomme remain at her own level, and they go bad when he tries to draw her up to his level. – But this is double nonsense. Things are excellent when he accepts her as she is. Moreover, Pomme is realistic. FIRST Francois must finish his study, and afterward they may see what they can do about her. At the present time they cannot even afford to go to the cinema without saving the money elsewhere.

Much more important is the other side of the coin. Pomme would really love to be like Francois. In a bookshop she looks at the volumes with paintings by famous artists. But she cannot learn to understand such things without help. And the idea never strikes Francois that he might help her. He just scolds her for being as she is.

There are several key scenes. In one of them Pomme is afraid of crossing a street full of motorcars. Francois had soon run over, and now he is standing there and shaking from impatience and irritation. The idea never occurred to him to take her hand and lead her over the street. And when she asks him what is the meaning of the word "dialectic", he gives her no reasonable answer.

By and large, the idea of "sexual Samaritans" is unrealistic. Extremely few people are prepared to sleep with another individual toward whom they feel little attraction and expect no other gain. There are nevertheless a few unusual situations in which I would seriously recommend such things. Francois just throws Pomme away, giving no thoughts to the consequences. He does no even participate in the last meal, when he is at home in front of her and will drive her to her mother's home as soon as the meal is over.

I claim that Francois did have enough personal strength to continue the relation a little longer, and to try to make the break more gradual and as little harmful to Pomme as possible. He could have seen her sometimes after she had moved to her mother, and he could sleep with now and then for a while.

I do think that he had an amount of responsibility for her, and should have done something to help her overcome the breaking of their relation.

There is something very beautiful about it though I feel I can't just put my finger on it but it is super simple yet super effective and impacting movie and performance especially by Isabelle Huppert...she is so vulnerable, simple, sad and natural...

I understand that this is the film that brought Isabelle Huppert, already the accomplished veteran of over 20 films and yet just 22-years-old, to the forefront of the French cinema. It is not hard to see why. She is apple sweet in her red hair and freckles and her pretty face and her cute little figure playing Pomme, a Parisian apprentice hairdresser. She is shy about sex and modest--just an ordinary French girl who hopes one day to be a beautician. Along comes François (Yves Beneyton) a tall, handsome, young intellectual from a petite bourgeois family who sweeps her off her feet.

They set up housekeeping and eventually he gets around to introducing her to his family. Alas, Mom finds the girl "decent," and ...well, it's rather predictable. You should watch. I've seen the story a number of times, and I find it rather painful, especially because in this case Huppert is so incredibly sweet and adorable. It is a naturalistic love story, like something from a nineteenth century novel, sad, compelling, bittersweet and ultimately tragic in an all too familiar way.

Claude Goretta's direction is lean and finely cut, and he does a great job with Huppert. There are moments of pure genius, especially the stunning final shot in which Pomme suddenly turns to the camera, on her face a vaguely hopeful, enigmatic expression. It lingers just long enough so that we realize this really is the end, and the lights are about to come up. The shot is especially effective because we can see the posters from Greece on the walls that reveal that what she just told François was a kind of proud make-believe story. Also very well done without undue emphasis is the scene where Pomme goes to him at the window in their apartment, presenting herself to him, so to speak, her naked little self so vulnerable, and he is not interested. Nothing more need to be said. It is like the turn in a sonnet: everything changes.

Without the beguiling child-like, but deeply experienced and finely expressed performance by Mademoiselle Huppert, this film would still be good, but nothing special. She carries the film: her timing, her intense concentration, her sense of who she is and how she feels at every moment is just perfect. She is exquisite.

For those of you familiar with the work of Isabelle Huppert, this is a film not to be missed.

(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)