A Women’s Affair signs the second collaboration, eleven years after the adaptation of the news item Violette Nozièreby Claude Chabrol with his new favorite actress (after Stéphane Audran): Isabelle Huppert. The filmmaker, marked like his entire generation by the Second World War, and whose two parents were great figures of the Resistance, became passionate about a book, signed by the lawyer Francis Szpiner, revisiting the true story of Marie-Louise Giraudan “angel maker” who was guillotined by the Vichy regime in 1943. With his co-writer Colo Tavernier (ex-wife of the late Lyon filmmaker), he adapts this book on the big screen, to describe the dark years of Pétainism, and denounce the totalitarianism which crushed any individual who did not conform to the imposed rules. The feature film is broadcast this Friday January 17, 2025 at 9:05 p.m. on France 5.
The women’s affair
In the film, Marie-Louise, it is Marie Latour, played by Isabelle Huppert, who will receive the Volpi Cup for best female performance at the Venice Film Festival. With her husband (François Cluzet, in his first major role) prisoner in Germany, Marie must manage to survive and feed their two children in occupied Paris. One day, a neighbor begged her to help her have an abortion. After that, other women, having heard of her “skills”, asked her to “get over” an unwanted pregnancy. There are many requests in these times of war. With this paid clandestine activity, Marie no longer has to worry about her children or herself. Her life changes, she becomes carefree. This is not to the taste of her husband, who returns from Germany scarred and diminished…
Guillotined for example
The real Marie-Louise Giraud was living in Cherbourg, in Normandy, when at the capitulation of France, her husband returned injured and no longer able to work. The family was struggling to make ends meet when everything changed one summer day in 1940. After helping a neighbor who was trying to have an abortion, Marie-Louise received a phonograph from her as a thank you. Seeing the opportunity to earn money, she offered her services to all women carrying a pregnancy, adulterine or not. Over two years, Marie-Louise allegedly performed twenty-seven clandestine abortions, a large number on prostitutes from whom she rented rooms. In February 1942, the Vichy regime, whose motto was “Work, Family, Fatherland”, gave abortion a new status: from “offence”, it moved to “crime against the security of the State”. From now on, any “angel maker” risked the death penalty. Marie-Louise Giraud was denounced, by means of an anonymous letter, in October 1942. On July 30, 1943, after a few months behind bars and a speedy trial before a special court, Marie-Louise, who had become the symbol of moral depravity, of the threat against the social order, was guillotined. Only a pardon could have saved her, but Marshal Pétain rejected it.
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