Film

Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in Chicago, plus articles, trailers and more

 

La Dentellière (1977)

Director: Claude Goretta

Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

As much as anything, it's probably the intriguing ambivalence of a narrative in which connections are never overtly made that turned this into an unexpected box-office hit. Where A Girl from Lorraine treads a clearcut feminist path, The Lacemaker lurks in more shady byways. Its heroine (beautifully played by Huppert as a passive object) seems less a candidate for women's lib than a helpless prisoner of the incommunicability Goretta had in mind when he defined the film as being about the problem between two people 'who are unable to love each other because they do not express themselves in the same way'. The refreshing quality of the film, as one listens to the expressive eloquence of its silences, is that it cannot be reduced to ideological terms. The heroine may be a victim of both social convention and a suave though sympathetic seducer, but with a mysterious inner radiance glowing behind her patient suffering, she is also much, much more.

Author: TM

Time Out Film Guide


What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields





Features

Do overs!

Do overs!

After Race to Witch Mountain, what should Disney remake next?

Gray's anatomy

James Gray wants to push buttons—again.

The next big thing?

Gigantic Releasing tries to rethink indie distribution…without movie theaters.

Red Diva: Lyubov Orlova, First Lady of Soviet Cinema

So you think you can dance, comrade?

Puppet master

Coraline director Henry Selick takes stop-motion animation into 3-D.

Socratic method

Laurent Cantet's approach on the set matches the message of his film.

Wander woman

Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy puts a Bush-era spin on the road movie.

Oscars

Read our interviews with the nominees, our reviews of the nominated films and more.