The Lacemaker movie storyline. Timid, discreet, and humble, the guileless nineteen-year-old assistant hairdresser, Pomme, lives with her doting mother and works in a Parisian beauty salon. When Pomme’s only friend and polar opposite–the experienced, sensuous and independent beautician, Marylène–decides to take her along on a vacation at the heart of Normandy,
in the chic seaside resort of Cabourg, the virginal woman has a chance encounter with the cultivated literature student, Francois. Head-over-heels in love with each other, the young and inexperienced couple returns to Paris with big dreams; however, life is as exciting as it is complicated. Now, one of the ardent lovers has a change of heart. Is Francois and Pomme’s cold separation inevitable?
The Lacemaker (French: La Dentellière) is a 1977 French drama film directed by Claude Goretta and starring Isabelle Huppert, Yves Beneyton, Florence Giorgetti, Annemarie Düringer, Renate Schroeter, Michel de Ré, Jean Obé, Monique Chaumette, Odile Poisson and Sabine Azéma. It is based on the 1974 Prix Goncourt winning novel La Dentellière by Pascal Lainé.
Film Review for The Lacemaker
Beatrice (Isabelle Huppert), the young heroine of Claude Goretta’s new French film, “The Lacemaker,” lives at home with her widowed mother and works in a Parisian beauty salon as an apprentice, sweeping up hair, running errands for tips, with the hope of one day be coming a hair stylist.It’s not an especially strong hope. Beatrice doesn’t have any passions of her own.
She’s not cold—she’s undiscovered, to herself as well as to others. She’s also very pretty in an idealized way, having the sort of looks that are so undefined they accept any interpretation. In an earlier era, she woud have been a D. W. Griffith heroine.In “the Lacemaker,” Mr. Goretta’s third film (after “The Invitation” and “That Wonderful Crook”) to be seen in this country, the Swiss director has made a rather solemnly beautiful film to expose the dark side of what is, essentially, a silly, romantic notion.
The Lacemaker” will be shown at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center at 9:30 and tomorrow evening at 6:15. It will begin its regular commercial engagement at the Fine Arts Theater Saturday.The film is the story of Beatrice’s inevitably unhappy affair with François (Yves Beneyton), a tall, lanky, decentmannered university student who wins Beatrice’s maidenhead and subsequently comes to realize, with a sinking heart, that she only exists for him to be around him, to reflect his love.Beatrice has no ambition, no interest in the world, no identity except as an ideal, an abstraction, someone who says the film’s epilogue, a painter would have made the subject of a genre painting, as a seamstress or a water girl or a lacemaker.
Beatrice is a blank canvas, which as Mr. Goretta seems to be saying may be fine for painters but leaves something to be desired as the companion of one’s life. She seldom talks or expresses any feeling except affection. As François says in frustration at one point, “I don’t know what goes on in your mind… you never ask questions.
“It’s not difficult to understand why François decides they have to split—living with her is like living with a sweet-natured mannequin—a decision she accepts with her usual passivity and that ultimately leads to tragic consequences.Just what Mr. Goretta is up to here I’m not sure. As he has shown in his earlier films, he is a director of delicacy who appreciates the odd variation on conventional behavior, the unexpected wisdom within the banal pronouncement.
“The Lacemaker,” though it is nicely acted and set, is only interesting and moving in a theoretical way. Miss Huppert is all too believable as a figure of idealized innocence who would drive, any ordinary man out of his mind with boredom and then, in a final irony leave him feeling guilty for not having sufficiently appreciated the rare gift that briefly had been his.
The Lacemaker (1977)
Directed by: Claude Goretta
Starring: Isabelle Huppert, Yves Beneyton, Florence Giorgetti, Annemarie Düringer, Renate Schroeter, Michel de Ré, Jean Obé, Monique Chaumette, Odile Poisson, Sabine Azéma
Screenplay by: Claude Goretta, Pascal Lainé
Production Design by: Claude Chevant, Serge Etter
Cinematography by: Jean Boffety
Film Editing by: Joële Van Effenterre
Makeup Department: Florence Fouquier D’Herouel
Music by: Pierre Jansen
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Jupiter Communications
Release Date: May 25, 1977
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