Violette Nozière (1978)
(Violette)
Country: FR/CAN
Technical: col/1.66:1 124m
Director: Claude Chabrol
Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Stéphane Audran, Jean Carmet
Synopsis:
France in the 1930s: a teenaged mythomaniac turns truant and spends her time in cafes and bars, where she picks up and sleeps with men without joy. Contracting syphilis, she lies and steals from her mother and stepfather, before ultimately attempting to poison them.
Review:
Chabrol presents us with a case study, before confusingly jumbling the chronology in the last act. The low budget is apparent from the deserted streets and buildings, but the film-making (mobile camera, lighting) is of the director's best. However, it is for Huppert's performance, the first of many collaborations, that this film will be remembered: she captures magnificently the absurdist enigma of the real Nozière, a figure who repels but whose lack of affect chimes perfectly with a decade of conflicting and self-annihilating ideologies.
(Violette)
Country: FR/CAN
Technical: col/1.66:1 124m
Director: Claude Chabrol
Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Stéphane Audran, Jean Carmet
Synopsis:
France in the 1930s: a teenaged mythomaniac turns truant and spends her time in cafes and bars, where she picks up and sleeps with men without joy. Contracting syphilis, she lies and steals from her mother and stepfather, before ultimately attempting to poison them.
Review:
Chabrol presents us with a case study, before confusingly jumbling the chronology in the last act. The low budget is apparent from the deserted streets and buildings, but the film-making (mobile camera, lighting) is of the director's best. However, it is for Huppert's performance, the first of many collaborations, that this film will be remembered: she captures magnificently the absurdist enigma of the real Nozière, a figure who repels but whose lack of affect chimes perfectly with a decade of conflicting and self-annihilating ideologies.
(Violette)
Country: FR/CAN
Technical: col/1.66:1 124m
Director: Claude Chabrol
Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Stéphane Audran, Jean Carmet
Synopsis:
France in the 1930s: a teenaged mythomaniac turns truant and spends her time in cafes and bars, where she picks up and sleeps with men without joy. Contracting syphilis, she lies and steals from her mother and stepfather, before ultimately attempting to poison them.
Review:
Chabrol presents us with a case study, before confusingly jumbling the chronology in the last act. The low budget is apparent from the deserted streets and buildings, but the film-making (mobile camera, lighting) is of the director's best. However, it is for Huppert's performance, the first of many collaborations, that this film will be remembered: she captures magnificently the absurdist enigma of the real Nozière, a figure who repels but whose lack of affect chimes perfectly with a decade of conflicting and self-annihilating ideologies.