Film Review
By the late 1970s, Claude Goretta had become one of Switzerland's most
highly regarded filmmakers, enjoying something of the acclaim and
attention that was lavished on his contemporary Alain Tanner. His
1973 film
L'Invitation had earned him an
Oscar nomination and took the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, so by the
time he came to make his most famous film,
La Dentellière (a.k.a.
The Lacemaker) he was an
internationally recognised and confident film director. Afflicted
with a deep-seated social conscience, Goretta was incapable of making a
film without a political slant, and so what first appears to be a
slight coming-of-age drama is in fact a remarkably incisive study in
class alienation. It's a truism that true love can overcome all
obstacles, but in Goretta's bleakly pessimistic world the one thing
that love cannot transcend is class.
Based on Pascal Lainé's acclaimed novel of the same title
(winner of the 1974 Prix Goncourt),
La
Dentellière depicts, with startling simplicity, the
emotional martyrdom of an innocent young woman who has the misfortune
to fall in love with a man from another social background. She is
an introverted hairdresser, with no desire to improve her mind nor her
personal circumstances. He is a smug bourgeois intellectual
who clearly wants to get on. The rift becomes apparent only when
these two young people move in together and realise they have nothing
in common. The gradual breakdown in their relationship is painful
to watch but it is inevitable. She is a pleb, he is a toff, and
never the twain shall meet. Neither character is to blame for the
failure of their love affair, and neither seems able to comprehend why
it has failed. They are separated by a force that is just too
great for them to resist, their class identity.
Under the guiding hand of a director as skilled and humane as Goretta,
La Dentellière could hardly
avoid being a potent piece of cinema, but the inspired casting of
21-year-old Isabelle Huppert in the lead female role gives it a special
poignancy and charm. Huppert had by this time appeared in
supporting roles in a dozen films, including a brief fling in Bertrand
Blier's
Les Valseuses (1974), but this
was her breakthrough role, one that earned her her first Best Actress
César nomination and won her a BAFTA for Most Promising
Actress. For an actress who is now famous for playing perverse,
predatory and powerful females, it seems odd that her first important
role should be that of a passive innocent, but it is a part that the
young Huppert inhabits with a sense of tragic ease. Even though
her character is virtually mute, her conversation consisting mostly of
mumbled monosyllabic answers to questions, she conveys so much of her
character's inner world, and with such astounding subtlety that no one
who watched her in this film could doubt that she had a phenomenal
career ahead of her. After this remarkable debut, Isabelle
Huppert was destined to be one of France's greatest screen
actresses. Unfortunately for Claude Goretta it was to be a career
highpoint - he would never again deliver a film of such lyrical power
and sensitivity.
© James Travers 2013
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
Pomme may be 19 but, in her outlook and behaviour, she is still a child.
A trainee hairdresser in Paris, she lives in her dreams and makes no attempt
to find herself a boyfriend. How happy she appears, in her chaste little
world! Her friend Marylène could not be more different.
After her latest lover deserts her, she decides to take charge of Pomme's
sentimental education and promptly whisks her off to the quaint Normandy
town of Cabourg for a well-deserved holiday. Here, Marylène
soon finds herself a new boyfriend, leaving Pomme to while away her empty
hours by herself as best she can. She doesn't remain lonely for long,
however. A good-looking arts student named François engages
her in conversation and before Pomme knows it she has found herself a new
friend.
François is almost as chronically shy with the opposite sex as Pomme
is, but somehow these two young people develop a close attachment and enjoy
being together. Once the holiday is over Pomme agrees to move in with
François, sharing his modest Paris apartment. It is only now
that Pomme and François begin to realise how ill-suited they are.
They come from completely different worlds. François is a cultured
intellectual, a man of varied interests; Pomme is practically uneducated
and knows next to nothing about the world. Pomme is always out of place
whenever her lover introduces her to his friends, and when François
presents his girlfriend to his bourgeois mother she makes it clearly understood
that the girl is not of their milieu.
It isn't long before Pomme gets the message and comes to accept that she
and François are totally ill-suited for one another. Though
inside her heart is breaking, she leaves him without making a scene, knowing
it is for the best. Some months later, François is surprised
to learn that Pomme has been admitted to a psychiatric clinic. When
he visits her she seems not to recognise him. Her life came to an end
when she left him, and for the rest of her days she is likely to remain like
this - a hollow shell of a woman, placidly devoted to her work as a lacemaker,
her sole preoccupation. François quietly walks, knowing he will
never see Pomme again.
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.