VIOLETTE Movie Review

Violette Noziere

Violette is Claude Chabrol's 1978 portrait of the real-life 18-year-old French girl Violette Nozière, who, in 1933, took it upon herself to poison her parents so that she might speed up that irritatingly slow process of waiting for them to die in order to receive her inheritance. Violette (Isabelle Huppert at her most appropriately inscrutable) had other bad habits as well; she was a prostitute and a thief, but compared to the successful murder of her father, the other stuff was small potatoes. Violette's crime caught the public's attention, and when the poisonings were splattered daily over page one, the calm and businesslike teenager became something of a bizarre heroine for surrealists and anarchists, and the target of the sexual fixations of more than a few others. Chabrol's movie has the same dry coolness as his protagonist; there's something vaguely amusing about the director's impersonal, relaxed, but unsentimental view of Violette's far-reaching depravity. It's not a traditional thriller, nor was Violette a traditional killer. With Jean Carmet and Stéphane Audran as dad and mom. Best Actress Award (Huppert), Cannes Film Festival.

NEXT STOP … Le Boucher, The Story of Women, Butterfly Kiss

1978 (R) 122m/C FR Isabelle Huppert, Stephane Audran, Jean Carmet, Jean Francoise, Bernadette LaFont; D: Claude Chabrol; W: Odile Barski, Frederic Grendel; C: Jean Rabier; M: Pierre Jansen. Cannes Film Festival ‘78: Best Actress (Huppert); Cesar Awards ‘79: Best Supporting Actress (Audran). VHS NYF