Violette Noziere will probably never receive the critical acclaim it deserves as it is just too subtle. As a psychological drama, the movie is simply without peer. It is based on a true-crime shocker of an eighteen-year old in 1930's who poisoned her parents evidently to get her hands on their money and then claimed her father (who dies in her attack) raped her. Condemned to die, she was subsequently pardoned and the verdict against her was eventually annulled. In the hands of a lesser artist than Chabrol, a script for Violette Noziere film would be almost guaranteed to end up as a banal thesis of one sort or another, either condemning or exculpating the heroine.
But Chabrol found two brilliant interpreters of the "cold woman syndrome" in Stephane Audran and the débutante Isabelle Huppert. With a masterful hand he drafts a black comedy of their mother-daughter rivalry in a bizarre, oppressively minuscule apartment, ending up in the death of the gentle, submissive, innocent "dad" (Jean Carmet). Isabelle's grasp of Violette's teenage psychosis leading up to the killing and after, is an acting masterpiece rarely seen. Best Chabrol ever, in my book !
But Chabrol found two brilliant interpreters of the "cold woman syndrome" in Stephane Audran and the débutante Isabelle Huppert. With a masterful hand he drafts a black comedy of their mother-daughter rivalry in a bizarre, oppressively minuscule apartment, ending up in the death of the gentle, submissive, innocent "dad" (Jean Carmet). Isabelle's grasp of Violette's teenage psychosis leading up to the killing and after, is an acting masterpiece rarely seen. Best Chabrol ever, in my book !