Word: huppert
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...created an enormous stir, which Director Claude Chabrol has depicted - there are angry crowds and balladeers singing laments in the street outside the courthouse - but his main interest is in the spoiled innocence of Violette. She is played with astonishing virtuosity by an extraordinary young French actress named Isabella Huppert. Violette's twisted mind seems to have been truly monstrous. The incest story was pure invention. She got her parents to swallow poison by telling them it was medicine. Yet something in her character was capable of generating sympathy. What we see in Actress Huppert's portrayal...
Pomme (Isabelle Huppert) is an eighteen-year-old attendant in a Parisian beauty salon, yet she doesn't like to wear make-up. Her best friend is Marilyn, an older woman who is frantically trying to preserve her attractive looks in search of wealthy men. Marilyn is drawn to Pomme because she envies Pomme's innocence; although Marilyn herself dresses elaborately, she gives Pomme a plain green sweater for her birthday...
GIVEN ALL the weaknesses in the film, however, there's still Isabelle Huppert's extraordinary performance. Effortlessly, she convey's Pomme's unique charm through a crooked smile, a flash of the eyes, or a sudden grimace. Shyly licking clean a spoon of chocolate ice cream when she meets Francois, Huppert is as absorbed in the eating as she is in the flirting--her Pomme is guileless. The only flaw in the performance must be attributed to a weakness in the script: although Huppert is a convincingly distraught Pomme at the end of the film, it's difficult to believe...
...film a title informs us that in an earlier century an old master would have painted Pomme as a lacemaker, implying that contemporary artists have lost interest in emotionally frail subjects. If so, Huppert's performance--for the most part--should help revive that interest...
...film's meaning, as well as its most remarkable achievement, is Huppert's performance as the heroine. Freckle-faced and slightly withdrawn, this actress creates an appealing young woman who is finally done in by her inability to articulate her feelings. The erudite null dismisses Pomme because he mistakes her silence for ignorance, and, lest we make the same error, the movie ends with the damaged and deserted Pomme staring accusingly at the audience. It is a devastating denouement?the kind we expect from heartbreak movies ?but it is not pity for the proverbial jilted heroine that is disturbing...