Violette Nozière (1978)
Directed by Claude Chabrol

Film Review

The true story of Violette Nozière provided director Claude Chabrol with ample material for him to explore his pet themes of bourgeois repression and the psychology of a murderer.  This is one of Chabrol's darker films and also one of his most complex, employing a disorientating use of flashbacks to emphasise the dual nature and possible mental instability of the heroine.  The picture that Chabrol paints is an ambiguous one - is Violette Nozière a calculating hedonist lacking in scruples, or a victim of bourgeois double standards, exploited and abused by all who know her?

Isabelle Huppert won the Best Actress Award at Cannes for her portrayal of Violette Nozière, and deservedly so.  This is the first of many collaborations between Huppert and Chabrol, an association of two immense talents that would yield many memorable films over the decades that followed.   In one of the defining performances of her career, Huppert succeeds in conveying the moral and psychological ambiguity of her character - the narcissistic egoism of the spoiled child, the vulnerability of the woman in love, and the calculating evil of a resolved killer.  It is testament to Huppert's skill as an actress that she portrays such a complex character so convincingly, and in a way that evokes a sympathetic reaction from the audience.

Film Synopsis

In 1933, Violette Nozière, 18, leads a respectable middleclass existence with her father Baptiste, a railway engineer, and mother Germaine.  Violette's parents have high hopes for her daughter, thinking she will one day land herself a wealthy husband and enjoy the kind of life they can only dream of.  But she has come to despise her petit-bourgeois life, epitomised by the cramped apartment the family has to live in, and thinks only of escape.  Without her parents' knowing, Violette spends her nights in the company of debauched young men, who take advantage of her innocence and wayward nature.

When the young woman contracts syphilis her parents are scandalised.  It is then that she makes her first attempt to kill them, unsuccessfully.  Not long afterwards, Violette falls passionately in love with a disreputable young man, Jean Dabin, who goads her into stealing money from her parents.  When the crime is discovered, life for the rebellious young woman becomes completely unbearable.  Heedless of the consequences, she poisons her parents.  Her father dies, but her mother survives and does her best to have her daughter condemned for murder.  Violette's lies that she has been abused by her father since childhood fall on deaf ears.  She is sentenced to death but has ample time to reflect on her crimes whilst languishing in prison...