Word: huppert
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STORY OF WOMEN. In 1943 the Vichy government of France condemned Marie-Louise Giraud to the guillotine for the crime of performing abortions. In this eloquent work, Marie (Isabelle Huppert) is neither a monster nor a savior, but a microcosm of her amoral country...
...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...
...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...
...Bedroom Window is like a bus ride through Wonderland. The direction is bumpy, but the plot, from Anne Holden's novel The Witnesses, is reverberant in twists and implications. Terry Lambert (Steve Guttenberg) is having an affair with his boss's wife Sylvia (Isabelle Huppert). Through her lover's window she sees a punk (Brad Greenquist) attack a young woman, Denise (Elizabeth McGovern). To protect Sylvia, Terry tells the police he witnessed the assault. But the road to jail is paved with good intentions. Soon Terry is a fugitive, and both Sylvia and Denise are prey to a wily killer...
...Isabelle Huppert, 33, has spent most of her busy career in French films, including Passion and Entre Nous (both 1983) and, opening in the U.S. this week, Sincerely Charlotte, directed by her sister Elisabeth, 38. Of her two previous American-made outings, Rosebud (1975) struck few sparks and Heaven's Gate (1980) dropped a megaton bomb. Undaunted, Huppert is trying English again. Cactus, an Australian drama, opens in October, and she just finished shooting a mystery in Baltimore called The Bedroom Window. She plays a sultry, sophisticated woman, a "black angel," as she puts it, who cheats on her husband...