Story of Women (1988)

hyped garbage

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

This movie that I watched a long time ago, and I just watched a bit of it recently, is a sad portrayal of a selfish female monster.I read on the reviews that she was an uneducated helpless woman who was aborting the little human beings of French women who had been having sex with German soldiers during the German occupation of France during the second world war.This uneducated woman was savvy enough to figure out a way to kill a slew of human beings in their mother's wombs.If she was able to do that it would seem that she could find a real job to support her family.I read on the reviews that her husband was to blame.I think that is utter nonsense.She was responsible for the murders of the babies,not anyone else.I feel sad for the aborted children and her children.It must have been horrible for her children to have to live with the fact that their mother was executed on the horrific machine of death the guillotine.I feel sad that a woman who is a mother would resort to such a heinous way to make money for her family.

Isabelle Huppert portrays an uneducated but self-reliant wartime mother of two, who almost ruthlessly assumes the traditional male role of family breadwinner by helping (to use an old euphemism) young girls 'in trouble'. The film isn't exactly impartial in its attitude toward the opposite sex, but don't me misled by the somewhat presumptuous title: it isn't strictly a story for women, and despite the vocation of its heroine has little to say about the volatile issue of abortion. The focus is more on the plight of women as second-class citizens, forced by necessity to fend for themselves (and rely on each other) while their men are away playing soldiers. It tells a complex story very simply, avoiding any soapbox grandstanding but allowing Huppert a chance to invest her character with plenty of gender-specific spleen. The final impact is undeniable: it's an often powerful experience, likely to stir up plenty of talk and emotion.

Though I had owned this on VHS (recorded off French TV), I only opted to check it out now – after acquiring the film in a version accompanied by English subtitles, on the occasion of its director's birthday. While not a typical effort (being a period melodrama and based on fact to boot), in retrospect, it is justly considered among Chabrol's finest.Star Isabelle Huppert (in one of her best performances, playing an essentially unsympathetic if pitiable type) received the Best Actress award at the Venice Film Festival for her work here. Interestingly, I would 'meet' Chabrol there in 2004 where the winning film that year happened to deal with the exact same subject as STORY OF WOMEN – the controversy regarding the practice of abortion, i.e. Mike Leigh's VERA DRAKE! Co-star Francois Cluzet, who acts pretty much as second-fiddle to Huppert in this case, would eventually come into his own under Chabrol's guidance in the similarly excellent L'ENFER (1994). The film, however, also provides a notable showcase for Marie Trintignant in the role of Huppert's prostitute friend; again, the actress would subsequently be promoted to lead status for the same director's BETTY (1992), which I have just watched and reviewed.STORY OF WOMEN, then, makes for compelling viewing in several different keys: as a character study (Huppert wants to be a singer, refuses to sleep with her ex-P.O.W. husband but then takes a much younger lover, of course offers her services to girls 'in trouble' and ultimately renounces her faith while in prison), as a look at war-torn France (though the Nazis are hardly ever in the foreground, the hardships endured by the locals obviously have a lot to do with how they are 'forced' to behave) and as a critique, in the vein of Costa-Gavras' movies, of the justice system (there is no doubt Huppert was at fault but the punishment meted out, to set an example and uphold the country's moral rectitude to counter the dishonor of occupation, was too extreme). Oddly enough, once the husband exposes her to the authorities for rather selfish reasons to begin with, he basically exits the picture and is never shown feeling any kind of remorse.For the record, Chabrol had already treated a cause célèbre in VIOLETTE NOZIERE (1978; which I will get to soon in my ongoing marathon, since I am actually approaching it in reverse chronological order!) and would do so again in the recent A GIRL CUT IN TWO (2007; that I have already viewed and commented upon).

(The spoilers are noted each time before they are revealed.) I once watched a special on Claude Chabrol's career. It said that his constant theme is people falling into crime so slow, so gradually, they wonder how they got there. It dawned on me that this fit most of his films. However, that description fits this movie most of all.I think this was my second Chabrol film, so I didn't know what to expect at all. I don't even think I read the back cover. Isabelle Huppert plays a woman who begins to see Nazi forces at work right before WWII.(Spoilers: First her Jewish friend is taken away. When money runs low, she beings performing abortions and renting out her home to prostitutes so she can have luxuries for her children during WWII. She has an affair and her husband turns her in out of jealousy. From being a normal mother, suddenly she finds herself on death row for committing several abortions on prostitutes. You almost feel sorry for her, until she remains unrepentant to the end.) Such an incredible performance, even though Isabelle Huppert's character is thoroughly unlikable. It is actually a true story, based on Marie La Tour (Spoiler: the last woman to receive the death penalty in France).