Every day, AlloCiné recommends a film to (re)watch on TV. Tonight: Isabelle Huppert is stunning with truth and emotion in this drama by Claude Chabrol.
On September 12, 2010, Claude Chabrol died at the age of 80. During his long career, this pillar of the New Wave worked seven times with one of his favorite actresses: Isabelle Huppert. This is precisely the case with this feature film little known to the general public.
Released in cinemas in 1988, A Women's Affair is the second collaboration between the filmmaker and the actress, after Violette Nozière (1976). The film, which takes place during the Occupation, relates the life of Marie Latour (interpreted by Isabelle Huppert), who is struggling to raise her two children, while her husband Paul (François Cluzet) is a prisoner in Germany.
One day, she decides to radically change her destiny when she begins to help the women of her village end their pregnancies. Having become an abortionist, she frees her peers from unwanted motherhood and, thanks to the money earned, quickly frees herself from marital servitude.
But Vichy France does not allow individual happiness to be deployed on the margins of official morality…
Alongside the acting duo Isabelle Huppert et François Cluzetwe also find Marie Trintignant (Ponette), Nils Tavernier (With all our strength), Lolita Chammah (Le Consentement) and Marie Bunel (Daaaaaali!).
-Portrait of a free woman in troubled times
Among the seven collaborations ofIsabelle Huppert et Claude Chabrol (Violette NozièreMadame Bovary, La Cérémonie, Rien ne va va plus, Merci pour le chocolat and L'Ivresse du politique), A women's affair remains one of the most unknown.
However, when it was released in cinemas, this historical drama caused a sensation with three César nominations and one at the Golden Globes for Best Foreign Language Film. Finally, Isabelle Huppert received the Volpi Cup for best female performance at the Venice Film Festival.
On the rating side, the reception is just as warm, since AlloCiné Internet users gave it the honorable average of 3.9 out of 5. It is also the highest rated film of Claude Chabrol in which plays Isabelle Huppert.
You will have understood it, A women's affair is an essential film on the right to abortion, in the same way as the feature films Never Rarely Sometimes Always by Eliza Hittman or The Event by Audrey Diwan.
Tonight on France 5 at 9:05 p.m.
