Filed under: 1970's, Audran, Stephane, Chabrol, Cinematheque, French, Huppert, Uncategorized
Violette
Claude Chabrol 1978
Isabelle Huppert and Stepahne Audren
Audran is the mother; Huppert is Violette – the notorious Violette – the daughter.
Her mother wishes her to be prim and sophisticated, and has ambitions for her. “You wish you’d married a train engineer, instead of a car man” says her husband, affectionately. Violette has affairs, sneaks out of her racy street clothes in the bathroom half way up the stairs to the apartment, and devotes herself slavishly to worthless me who bleed her dry for money. She is infinitely needy, but iron in her will for – something, at the same time.
Very good, like a still life on moving film. The two women are great, and the husband is a very nice backdrop. Their tiny apartment, which is nevertheless well furnished, embeds you in the frenzied psychological state of, in any case, two of the inhabitants. Violette wants more, but she does not know what it is she wants, she wants it too soon, and most of all, it is not a want a need, but a compulsive, dangerous, immediate need.
Chabrol as always, pulls no punches, and his knowledge of the hidden operations of the human mind is alarming because he makes no mistake, and makes it all natural, even when the results are so unexplained and disagreeable.
dir. Chabrol, Claude
France 1960
w/ Stepane Audran
IMDB 7.3
Not the best Chabrol – Stephane is v. young, however it is decent. In the end, as expected, a murder twist, although really it is a story of 4 shop girls being pursued by men and, in their own discreet way, doing some pursuit themselves.
Early Chbrol, which means in some ways more offbeat than good.
