[FILM REVIEW] The Lacemaker (1977) - The film that made Isabelle Huppert famous

As an actress, Isabelle Huppert is somewhat of a darling of the French art cinema directors. The breakthrough came in 1977 with The Lacemaker, as the shy and quiet Pomme. Claude Chabrol (1930-2010) quickly got his eyes on her and gave her the role of the dangerous and unpredictable woman in Violette (1978) in which she's mixing poisonous cocktails to end her suffocating family. Huppert has payed a price for having mutilated himself with sharp pieces of glass (The Pianist), having massacred a bourgeois family (La Cérémonie) and having poisoned her family; roles that made her into the pet psychopath and favorite bitch of European art cinema. She has played nearly all the invectives and dirty word you can give a woman: spinster, whore, frigid, nymphomaniac, bitch, etc. The truth is that it's only a handful of films in which she plays a pervert or psychopath.

She's not a physically big or strong woman, but she has an incredible poise in all of her delicacy. There's almost something frightening about her. In The Lacemaker we have an opportunity to see her in a completely different role.

She plays the timid, observing and slightly emotionally truncated 19-year-old working-class girl Béatrice, or "Pomme" as she's called, who works at a hair salon. The character might in the beginning of the film remind a bit of Catherine Deneuve's disturbed salon assistant Carole in Polanski's "Repulsion" from 1965; Pomme is equally reclusive towards men as Deneuve's character. With wide eyes she gapes at her best friend, the older and more dissolute Marèlyne, that is desperate at the thought of remaining unmarried at the age of 30. When Marèlyne wants to throw herself out a window after being dumped by a married man, Pomme seems to be more concerned about her friend's stuffed animals that get the brunt in the heat of the moment. 

On a vacation with her friend, Pomme meets the bourgeois Francois. His family appreciates her shyness. He seems to be with her just to impress and outshine her with his intellectual superiority. Pomme and Francois don't speak quite the same language and their social and cultural differences eventually plays its toll.

I don't really want to go more into the plot - it's a nice, well-crafted and low-key little film, but a fairly typical 70's depiction of a working-class daughter on the loose in a world of self-absorbed bourgeoisie. Claude Goretta's film would be forgotten long ago if it weren't for the excellent Isabelle Huppert. She's a most physical actress who isn't really dependent on lines to express herself. It's as if I'm bewitched when I observe her restrained body language and suddenly out of the blue she utters a barely audible sigh, "Ah, bon..." and I'm completely sold. It's in these moments that I'm convinced that she's the reason the film medium was invented.  

 — SteemSwede