Word: chabrol
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Directed by Claude Chabrol...
Screenplay by Colo Tavernier O'Hagan and Claude Chabrol...
...praise, then, to Claude Chabrol for painting the story in honest shades of gray, for finding sense in a case that could wallow in sensation. His Marie (Isabelle Huppert) is caged in a drab marriage in a dull town in occupied France. The Germans have put hopes on hold; survival is a matter of wily , compromise. When Marie finds a neighbor artlessly attempting an abortion, she helps out. Word gets around, and soon she is a successful businesswoman. And the perfect homebody: she performs abortions in the kitchen, rents her spare room to a prostitute and takes her collaborator lover...
Story of Women, named best foreign-language film by three critics' groups, is an eloquent example of Simenon cinema -- the kind of movie that, in the manner of Georges Simenon's novels, treats melodramatic subjects with clinical dispassion. Chabrol never coddles viewers; he trusts them to sort out the evidence. His Marie is too complicated to be either a monster or a savior. And Huppert's beautifully deadpan performance finds the ideal emblem for Marie, a vessel empty of everything but human contradictions...