Une Affaire de femmes

Marie (Isabelle Huppert) is a struggling mother of two in Vichy France during World War 2, whose husband has been imprisoned. By chance, she ends up performing an abortion for a neighbour and soon finds herself inundated with requests from other women. She agrees and must be extra careful to hide her activities from the authorities, as well as a secret affair from her husband following the latter’s return from prison.

Ten years after their first film together Violette Nozière, filmmaker Claude Chabrol and actress Isabelle Huppert reunite for another story of a contentious, historical female figure, which earned the director a Golden Globe for best foreign film and the star best actress at the Venice film festival. Moreover the film’s controversy led to a fatal tear gas attack at one screening in Paris, by a religious group who did not take kindly to a blasphemous prayer recited by Huppert’s character in the film.

The heavy subject matter is given its due, through Chabrol’s measured pacing and skillful direction. His regular cinematographer, Jean Rabier, captures the menacing mood of the time through some stark photography, while the detailed sets, décor and costume design transport us temporally in an effortless transition.

Huppert excels once more as the troubled protagonist and shows how the great actors and actresses of cinema repeatedly rise to challenging roles. She infuses her character with the vulnerability and uncertainty one would expect of a woman in such a situation, which culminates in an endearing portrait. However, ambiguity always abounds in Chabrol’s world and Marie is no exception. Indeed a victim of ruthless and unjust societal forces, Marie nonetheless exploits the profits of her services for questionable ends and is no saint in her quest for material gains and personal desires. Huppert accordingly injects a more disturbing quality to her character, which baffles our predictable desire for heroic stoicism, so often identified with protagonists of war films. Instead, we are presented with a picture of a more complex personality, one who has a moral barometer but is not impervious to the pressures of the extreme circumstances of her environment, leading to immoral behaviour. We are thus presented with a real person; to err is but human…

Complementing Huppert’s powerhouse performance is a fine supporting cast, which includes, as Marie’s husband, François Cluzet (L’Enfer, Tell No-One), Marie Trintignant (Betty, Le Cousin) as her prostitute friend, and Nils Tavernier (L.627), a Nazi collaborator and Marie’s lover.