Already hailed as a ”masterpiece,” ”Story of Women” (”Une Affaire de Femmes”) marks a jubilant reunion for Isabelle Huppert with veteran French filmmaker Claude Chabrol.
Like Chabrol`s 1978 ”Violette,” in which Huppert starred as a 1930s teenager who murdered her father, ”Women” fictionalizes another real life French horror of not so long ago, featuring Huppert as a woman guillotined for performing illegal abortions.
Huppert`s Marie Latour is the hellion-like heroine, whose wartime struggles for her family`s survival doom her. Huppert`s Marie is by turns a tigress defending her young, a lioness capable of taming and ruling everyone around her and, finally, a caged lamb led to slaughter.
Huppert, harsh, giddy and recklessly daring (often simultaneously) gives a performance that has been compared to Vivien Leigh`s Scarlett O`Hara, Bette Davis` Margo Channing, Meryl Streep`s Sophie.
”Women,” which opens Wednesday at the Music Box Theatre, is more than a memorable vehicle, however. Chabrol has fashioned a complex canvas that spans a crucial period in French history, the collaboration of the conquered French with the Nazis and the hypocrisy that allowed French Jews to be deported to death camps while the government preached the importance of family values. Also indicted (hence the title) is a patriarchal system that does not understand ”the business of women.”
Chabrol focuses, not on Germans, but on the French. He begins in 1941 as Marie, an impoverished mother of two small children whose husband (Francois Cluzet) is at war, struggles to feed her family.
”I was between 10 and 15 during the war,” Chabrol relates, in his Manhattan hotel suite. ”Most of the people were zombies. People were poor-the idea of putting papers on your breast to keep warm in winter was true. The men were nothing, prisoners beaten by the Germans. Young men were sent to Germany to work. That`s why many abortions were done at that time. The women were the masters of the situation. And they had `accidents` not only with Germans but with whatever men were available.”
Marie`s life dramatically changes for the better when she assists a neighbor with a kitchen-table abortion, via soap, rubber tube and water. When she meets a prostitute (Marie Trintignant) and exaggeratedly says she helps girls ”in trouble,” Marie soon finds herself with a booming business.
As her business grows, so does her income. And her personality changes. No longer a downtrodden victim, Marie rejoices in her financial independence, buying food, sweets and clothes for her children and indulging in singing lessons for herself. When her husband returns disabled from war, Marie doesn`t disguise her lack of interest.
Brazenly, she takes on a Nazi-informant lover (Nils Tavernier), pays the housekeeper to sleep with her mopey husband and rents rooms to hookers.
When one of Marie`s abortions results in a woman`s death, the despairing husband commits suicide. But Marie is unchastened.
Until her arrest-when she admits guilt and professes remorse. Marie expects to be reunited with her children. Instead, the Vichy government, desperate for new citizens to offset the war fatalities, executes Marie as an example.
The impetus for ”Women” came three years ago when actress and director decided to reunite. Chabrol searched for a suitable subject for his leading lady and considered Camille Claudel, Auguste Rodin`s sculptor-mistress who went mad.
”But the other Isabelle was there first,” Chabrol jokes, referring to Isabelle Adjani, who acquired the rights. Then Colo Tavernier O`Hagan, a screenwriter, sent Chabrol a book based on Marie-Louise Giraud, the last woman executed in France.
”The book was `just the facts` and that was it. It wasn`t really a point-of-view about the time,” says Huppert in another hotel suite. ”But Chabrol wanted to do a film about this time. It`s still a very troubled period in French history. We all know half the population was collaborating with the Occupation.”
”The real woman was not, I suppose, like Isabelle,” adds Chabrol. ”She was fat, a little ugly, drinking very much and not very much older.
”Not an angel. But Isabelle is not an angel, either.”
If Huppert is awe-inspiring onscreen, in person the diminutive, Paris-based actress is refreshingly down-to-earth. Dressed in a stylish body-hugging purple suit and red suede flats, Huppert laughs off her approach to acting.
”I never think of anything when I play, I`m really an animal,” she declares in lightly accented English. ”I never have any conscious reflection whatsoever. I read and it`s like a little computer, it comes up to my mind. And I follow the little path that takes shape in my mind when I read the script. And that`s it.
”I think as an actress, everything has to come out of your imagination. Psychology follows the technical ornaments, the hairstyles and costumes.”
Because of the abortion issue and its unflinching portrait of French collaborationists, ”Story of Women” was controversial enough in Paris to prompt one tear-gas bomb in a theater-which had an unfortunate result. ”An asthmatic man was there with his mistress,” Chabrol explains. ”He had a heart condition and was so shocked by the explosion, he suffered a heart attack and died.”
But here in the States, a drama celebrating an abortionist martyr was enough to instill caution and fear. ”Women,” despite its Venice Film Festival Best Actress award to Huppert, critical raves and good box office, was shunned until producer Marin Karmitz decided to distribute it with his own money through New Yorker Films.
Chabrol, puffing on his pipe, says, ”I have no message about abortion. My message is to say, Let women do it. It`s a problem for women.”
”We all know that abortion is not really a feast for any woman. It`s something very, very difficult to go through,” says Huppert. ”On one hand, of course women claim the right for abortion to be free. But on the other hand, we know that psychologically it`s very difficult. We have an expression in France, `le moindre mal`-the less-bad thing. Nature is like this. I don`t know any women who can say, `Let`s have an abortion.` It`s really painful. And that`s what Chabrol tries to assert-it`s the lesser bad you can have, it`s not the best thing in the world.”
In France, abortion is not only legal but they also have developed the new, at-home abortion pill. Huppert, who declines to give her age but is in her mid-30s, says, ”When I reached the age to be concerned, we had the laws changed already.” The reluctance to distribute the film in the United States she characterizes as ”something very reactionary you wouldn`t expect.”
”I never thought (Marie Latour) was a metaphor for French women but for survivors of the war,” adds the actress. ”I think there are a lot of common points with Scarlett O`Hara.
”Scarlett`s one of the most beloved characters in literature and cinema. When you think of Scarlett, she`s very unsympathetic but she`s a survivor.”
Huppert`s career was launched with ”The Lacemaker” in 1976, a classic study of a caddish lover driving a sweet young innocent mad. Murderous
”Violette” won her the Cannes Best Actress prize.
Her American debut came when Michael Cimino fought to cast her as his heroine in ”Heaven`s Gate.” The irony was Huppert alone received good reviews in that now-legendary bomb. In 1983, ”Entre Nous,” with Huppert as a 1950s housewife, became one of the most successful French films ever released here.
In 1986`s ”Bedroom Window,” her only other American movie, she was nude, glamorous and hard as her red nail polish. If Hollywood beckons again, would she answer the call?
”Oh, my desire is not the problem,” she laughs. ”The whole point in my profession is to be elected. Whether I want to work with Sydney Pollack or Woody Allen or Francis Coppola, it`s not important. It`s their desire. I think I`m going to have my big, big roles now, I hope.”
Although never married, Huppert lives with director Ronald Chammah, with whom she has Lolita, 6, and Lorenzo, 10 months.
”It`s a perfect collaboration,” she says of Chabrol. ”We waited 10 years to work together again and we`re not going to wait another 10. We`re going to do our next two movies together.” To be filmed back-to-back, they are literary adaptations: first, Flaubert`s ”Madame Bovary,” which will be the third movie version, and then Maupassant`s ”Mademoiselle Fifi,” an 1870 updating of the Biblical story of murderous Judith. ”She can be the best Bovary,” predicts Chabrol.
”Whenever I make a film with Claude, I win awards. I want to go on until I win my Oscar,” Huppert says with a laugh.
