The Lacemaker (1977)

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Because the English-language dvds on offer were either inordinately expensive or abysmally reviewed for their quality I had to get this film in Spanish, which I do not speak. It didn't really matter since its message is not conveyed through dialogue. It might well have been made in the silent era, and been just as powerful. I must have seen it in about 1977, and it has been unforgettable.If there is a flaw to this story, which doesn't affect its quality, it is that Pomme (or Beatrice ?) is surely doomed from the outset. The ending can be seen coming from the very start, and it's thrown into relief by the girl's feisty fellow-hairdresser, Marylene, who bounces back from any reversal.In any case, impossible to give it less than 10/10.

This is a lovely film, although just too far divorced from any engaging melodrama to really sell itself. It's very up-to-date, urban backdrops and the distracting energy of the soixante-huitard creating another layer of narrative, largely to emphasise the split between the educated Francois (Beneyton) and Huppert's beautician Pomme. It's spiced up with a brilliant turn from Florence Giorgetti as the heart on (see-through)sleeve Marylene - whose lifestyle will Pomme choose, loving morally straightjacketed monogamy with Francois or philosophy shunning hedonism with all its frivolity and heartbreak?Michael Cimino used The Lacemaker to sell Huppert to the producers of the ill-fated Heaven's Gate - it was Huppert's inscrutability in role that Cimino wanted to put alongside Kristoffersen's all-American hero of the latter picture. One can't help thinking that Huppert may only have one gear. With the exception of, in fact, a feisty performance in Heaven's Gate and a comic turn in Chabrol's The Ceremony, riveting deadpan is her modus operandi. Here in The Lacemaker we get a premium balance of an acting range controlled beneath a surface which is as much to stop her passion bursting forth as to portray the modesty of her character. It's as good as it gets, but that's very good. 5/10

The Lacemaker, 1977, its oblique sexual politics appear dated twenty-five years later. Pascal Laine (author) and Claude Goretta would have us believe that the young male student's callowness leads to heartbreaking tragedy for Huppert's character. Twenty-five years later that assertion seems callow itself, and shallow political nonsense. Healthy young women are not so helpless. I understand the movie as a love story (intimate nudity is substituted for sex, and any love they may have shared we must take on faith) concerning two pathologically depressed people. They are drawn together by their mutual recognition and the hope that the other can alleviate their individual suffering. Of course, they discover that their depression prevents any real intimacy.

Who knows why we retain the memory of some films and others remain a forgotten blip. "The Lacemaker" stayed with me over the years. I thought Isabelle Huppert played a marvelous part, and the story line fascinated me. I can still feel the sadness of her character when she was rejected by her lover, and then paid the price for her addiction to him. Films like "Blade Runner," "Murmur of the Heart," "Experience Preferred but not Essential, " The Unbearable Lightness of Being," "Closely Watched Trains," and a host of other good films will always be special to me, but not as endearing as "La Dentelliere."