Film Forum

Switzerland, France, West Germany, 1977
Directed by Claude Goretta
Written by Claude Goretta
Based on the novel by Pascal Lainé
Starring Isabelle Huppert, Yves Beneyton
Approx. 107 min. DCP restoration.

"Béatrice (Huppert)  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 becoming a hair stylist. It's not an especially strong hope. Béatrice 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 would have been a D. W. Griffith heroine. In THE LACEMAKER, the Swiss director has made a rather solemnly beautiful film to expose the dark side of what is, essentially, a silly, romantic notion." – Vincent Canby, The New York Times

Reviews

“The movie’s performances are wonderfully subtle. Isabelle Huppert is good at the very difficult task of projecting the inner feelings of a character whose whole personality is based on the concealment of feeling.”
– Roger Ebert