Une affaire de femmes (DVDrip - 1988)

Marie Latour (Isabelle Huppert) wants to be a singer, but she is a woman struggling against poverty in war-torn France, with two children to feed and a husband away fighting. When a neighbor becomes pregnant, Marie performs an abortion and is rewarded for her services with a Victrola. It's a small step from the Victrola to an income, and Marie finds that she likes to live comfortably and feed her children well. Her husband Paul (Francois Cluzet) returns and attempts to coerce her into being the type of wife he imagines he wants, but Marie insists on running things her way, and her husband is relegated to the role he imagined for her. She finds contentment in her power (merely the power to be herself and pursue her desires), but things are terribly out of balance in the world she was born into and eventually revenge is exacted.






The women in this story are the customers of amateur abortionist Isabelle Huppert. The time is 1941, and the place is a Nazi-occupied French town. Struggling to survive, Huppert turns to illegally terminating unwanted pregnancies for a hefty fee. As her income increases, Huppert moves her family from their grimy surroundings to a posh apartment, sharing her digs with her new friend, prostitute Marie Trintignant. Completely seduced by her affluent lifestyle, Huppert ignores her shell-shocked husband Francois Cluzet, preferring to dally with Nazi collaborator Nils Tavernier. Things take a disastrous turn after one of Huppert's "customers" dies and her disgruntled husband turns her over to the authorities. Story of Women was inspired by the real-life tale of Marie-Louise Girard, who in 1943 was executed by the Vichy Government, who'd declared abortion as a Crime Against the State because it diminished the number of potential soldiers.

A quietly observed true-life tale, The Story of Women neatly avoids lionizing its central figure, based on Marie-Louise Girard, who was executed for performing illegal abortions in Vichy France. Marie is a woman with a practical disposition; when a friend asks Marie to help her terminate her pregnancy and the result is successful, Marie realizes that there is more to life than a loveless marriage to a husband suffering from shell shock. She is not, in short, a moral crusader, but a businesswoman, and her practicality extends to having an affair with a collaborator who can provide her with some measure of sexual pleasure. Rarely cracking even a tiny smile, Isabelle Huppert makes Marie a rather chilly character, but you can't help admiring her resourcefulness in the midst of a population that director Claude Chabrol portrays as either walking dead or opportunistic traitors. Standing up to the swinish Vichy authorities at the story's end, Marie finally comes off as a figure of dignity. All Movie






Un asunto de mujeres. Marie es una mujer que, durante la época de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, práctica abortos clandestinos en un pueblo de Francia ocupado por los nazis y, gracias a esta práctica, consigue mejorar el bienestar de su familia. Pero cuando una de sus "pacientes" muere, el trabajo de Marie es descubierto.





Marie, mère de famille, accepte d'aider sa voisine à se débarrasser d'un enfant non désiré. Encouragée par le succès, elle entame un processus qui en fera une faiseuse d'anges, et une femme adultère. Mais la dureté de la vie sous le régime de Vichy la rattrape, elle est dénoncée et finira guillottinée pour l'exemple, une des dernières femmes guillotinées en France. Isabelle Huppert est très impressionnante dans le rôle d'une femme complexe, dure et enfantine à la fois.