Rent The Essential Claude Chabrol: Vol.2: Story of Women (1988)

Rough Justice - The Essential Claude Chabrol: Vol.2: Story of Women review by Steve

Based on the true story of one of the last women to be guillotined in France, with Isabelle Huppert as an illiterate, destitute mother in Normandy during WWII who carries out illegal abortions for money, which may have led to a death. And as the title suggests, it also reflects more generally on the experience of being a woman.

This is mainly biological, but also social and within the home. Claude Chabrol usually focuses on bourgeoise hypocrisy and there is something of that here too as the subordinate French Government sends the abortionist to her execution in an attempt to reassert moral authority. While their fascist bosses commit mass murder.

It's a complex performance from Huppert. There is some justification offered for her actions, as her own children are starving, and there is a complete social and moral breakdown in the community. Everyone sells what they can. But she is not sympathetic. She is uneducated, but also venal, disloyal and unscrupulously pragmatic.

Yet the director's dismay is reserved for the sanctimonious patriarchs of the Vichy government. There's fine support from François Cluzet as the rejected husband and Marie Trintignant as a cheerfully resilient prostitute. The northern coast is rotten with fog and poverty. This is a grim, self-eviscerating take the Nazi occupation.