To revisit this exquisite performance from Isabelle Huppert is to forgive her the sleaziness of some of her recent choices. Like the other posters I have just read here this film - or rather this performance - has remained vivid in my memory since I saw it first on television some years ago. I bought the DVD in Paris last March and have just got around to playing it. Unfortunately it is offered without subtitles but dubbed into several languages so that any non-French speakers who have yet to see it will almost certainly lose out. There's one semi major hurdle to get over but when and if that is accomplished this is a semi-masterpiece. The film was made in 1977 and there is nothing to say that it is not also set at that time yet we have a pretty 18 year old girl who admits to being a virgin and a courtship which would do credit to a repressed English couple of the 1930s/40s/50s rather than a FRENCH couple in the 1970s. There is an equal lack of Passion between Huppert and Yves Benyeton, in fact Kevin McCarthy lookalike Benyeton is SO wooden we can't help wondering if he is REALLY a pod who somehow strayed from the set of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers on to THIS set. Throughout the acting of Huppert is Magnificent and leaves everyone else for dead. Huppert is not only one of the most beautiful but also one of the most Intelligent actresses working today and the way in which she suppresses her natural intelligence to play a colorless, unambitious, low self-esteemed teenager is little short of incredible. Goretta has chosen to end with a shot of Huppert looking straight into camera with a completely expressionless gaze reminiscent of Garbo in the last shot of Queen Christina. Whether by accident or design it's a comparison that Huppert can more than justify. One of the all-time great film performances.
Review of The Lacemaker
