La Dentellière [The Lacemaker] **** (1977, Isabelle Huppert, Yves Beneyton, Florence Giorgetti) – Classic Movie Review 5118

Co-writer/ director Claude Goretta’s penetrating 1977 film character study stars Isabelle Huppert as a reserved apprentice teenage Paris hairdresser called Pomme who goes with her friend Marylène (Florence Giorgetti) to Cabourg in Normandy for a few days’ vacation. There she has a holiday affair with a middle-class intellectual student named François (Yves Beneyton), who becomes her first lover.

But, it turns out, real communication with him is impossible through their social and cultural differences. Back home in Paris, love goes totally wrong and the girl Pomme heads for a mental breakdown.

Goretta makes the study of distress resonant and the situations all too believable. There are many good things about the film, but, best of all is the memorable performance by Huppert, who manages to make a depressed, passive character sympathetic. You can, in your head, just hear the sound of her silence.

Also in the cast are Annemarie Düringer as Pomme’s mother, Renate Schroeter as François’s girlfriend, Michel de Ré, Monique Chaumette as as François’s mother, Jean Obé as François’s father, Christian Baltauss, Christian Peythieu, Heribert Sasse, Jeanne Allard, Odile Poisson, Gilberte Gèniat and Sabine Azéma.

It is a French-Swiss-West German film, runs 107 minutes, is co-written by Pascal Lainé, based on his novel, is shot by Jean Boffety and scored by Pierre Jansen.

Huppert won her (so far) only Bafta award for Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles in 1978.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5118

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