Made ten years after Violette Nozière, this, along with the previous film, can be seen as a kind of diptych. Both are inspired by real-life criminal cases. The main differences lies in the historical and political backcloth within which they were set, and this is occupied France in 1943.
Class is also a difference, and here we have the barely literate Marie Latour – Isabelle Huppert again, this time representing Marie-Louise Giraud – determined to make as much money as she can for her family. She's married to Paul (François Cluzet), and although she has two young children her relationship with him is clearly sinking and she avoids sex.
One way she can earn extra money is by letting a room out to her friend the prostitute Lucie (Marie Trintignant), although her real earnings are coming from her business performing illegal abortions – she's a faiseuse d'anges – and for a time she's able to keep the knowledge of these activities from Paul.
But it's not long before Paul realises that Marie has a lover, Lucien (Nils Tavernier), and in fact she becomes not too secretive about the fact: with the result that Paul makes a letter to the authorities made out of cut-out letters from newspapers, and soon Marie is arrested. And not only that: as a measure of the gravity of her offence she's sent to Paris.
As this is Paris during the Vichy régime, and Pétain's portrait adorns one of the rooms where Marie has a talk to her lawyer, and as abortion is seen not just as a crime but a crime against the state, justice is extremely harsh with Marie: she receives the death sentence, which will never be commuted to life imprisonment. It is evident what Chabrol thinks about this gruesome farce of a verdict.
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