General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Story of Women

Story of Women (French: Une affaire de femmes) is a 1988 French drama directed by Claude Chabrol, starring Isabelle Huppert as Marie Latour, a working-class mother in Nazi-occupied France who becomes a clandestine abortionist and is ultimately executed under Vichy law¹. The film is based on the book of the same name by the lawyer Francis Szpiner, which dramatized the real case of Marie-Louise Giraud, guillotined in 1943 for performing illegal abortions²^•³. Huppert won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the 1988 Venice Film Festival for the role⁴.

Key fact	Detail
Original title / year	Une affaire de femmes, France, 1988¹
Director and writers	Directed by Claude Chabrol; screenplay by Chabrol and Colo Tavernier, from Francis Szpiner's book²
Lead cast	Isabelle Huppert (Marie Latour), François Cluzet (Paul), Marie Trintignant (Lulu), Nils Tavernier (Lucien)⁵
Historical basis	The case of Marie-Louise Giraud, guillotined on 30 July 1943 under Vichy legislation that made abortion a capital crime⁶
Principal award	Volpi Cup for Best Actress, Venice 1988, shared ex aequo with Shirley MacLaine for Madame Sousatzka⁴^•⁷
French release	14 September 1988; CNC visa no. 67782 dated 27 September 1988⁸
Restoration	Restored in 4K by Éclair Classics for MK2, with CNC support; re-released in cinemas 29 September 2021¹

Spoilers

Plot

During the Occupation, Marie Latour raises her two children in hardship while her husband Paul is a prisoner in Germany. She helps a neighbor end an unwanted pregnancy, and the practice grows: with husbands away as prisoners, love affairs, and liaisons with the occupier, demand is steady, and Marie's services become paid and then her livelihood¹. She rents a room to her prostitute friend Lulu as a further source of income and takes a younger lover, Lucien⁵^•⁹.

Paul returns from captivity embittered and weakened, a contrast to the material comfort Marie has built, and she dreams of another life¹. Vichy France, the film's synopsis notes, does not tolerate individual happiness unfolding outside official morality; in June 1943 Marie the abortionist is sentenced to death by criminal court¹^•¹⁰.

Production

Chabrol wrote the screenplay with Colo Tavernier, his then wife, adapting Szpiner's 1986 book²^•¹¹. Jean Rabier was the cinematographer, Matthieu Chabrol composed the score, and the production companies were La Sept, Les Films du Camélia, MK2 Productions, and Molecule S.A. / Films A2². Huppert said the shoot took eight weeks and that Chabrol worked so fast his footage hardly needed editing; she had concerns about playing an abortionist, and Chabrol told her the character could just as easily have been a plumber¹².

Chabrol described his visual approach in a remark quoted by the film's distributor: "Côté mise en scène, je me suis amusé à faire un film de 1943 et non un film sur 1943," adding that filmmakers of the period had not yet seen Citizen Kane and did not know deep focus, which he played on¹.

Historical basis and the Vichy context

The film's source case sits inside a specific legal history. Abortion had been criminalized in France at least since an edict of 1556, and under article 317 of the penal code it was a crime judged by a court of assizes¹³. Under Vichy, repression intensified: the law of 15 February 1942 made abortion a crime against the security of the state, subject to special courts and punishable by death¹³^•¹⁴. A law of 14 September 1941 had already barred mitigating circumstances and suspended sentences in abortion cases¹⁵.

Marie-Louise Giraud was guillotined on 30 July 1943 on the basis of this Vichy legislation, which treated abortion as a crime against the state punishable by death⁶. One retrospective account states she had performed 27 illegal abortions in the Cherbourg region¹⁶; sources describe her as one of the last women guillotined in France³. The natalist context mattered: Vichy increased penalties against abortion, making it a capital offense and a crime against the French people, and made adultery by the wives of prisoners of war a crime¹⁷.

Reception and awards

At the 45th Venice International Film Festival in 1988, Huppert won the Volpi Cup for Best Female Interpretation, ex aequo with Shirley MacLaine for Madame Sousatzka, and Chabrol received a Filmcritica "Bastone Bianco" Special Mention while being nominated for the Golden Lion⁴^•⁷^•². Le Monde's review from the festival called it "un grand film" and praised Huppert's identification with the character¹⁸.

In the 1989 to 1990 awards season the film was named Best Foreign Language Film by the New York Film Critics Circle, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association (tied with Distant Voices, Still Lives), the National Board of Review, and the Boston Society of Film Critics, and it was nominated for the 1990 Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film⁴. At the 1989 César Awards it received three nominations: Best Actress (Huppert), Best Supporting Actress (Trintignant), and Best Director (Chabrol)¹⁹. On Rotten Tomatoes it holds an 85% Tomatometer from 13 reviews²⁰.

Critics emphasized the film's refusal to judge. Roger Ebert called it "a morality play without a conclusion" in which Chabrol does not make it easy for the audience to assign virtue or blame²¹. The Washington Post's Desson Howe wrote that it is "an unflinching treatment of a volatile issue" that refuses to simplify²², and the Los Angeles Times described it as the culmination of Chabrol's three-decade obsession with bourgeois hypocrisy⁹.

The film's subject also drew hostility in France. According to a Le Monde report of 1 November 1988, a bomb had gone off on 8 October at a Montparnasse cinema during a screening of Une affaire de femmes, causing the death of a spectator with a heart condition; the film had been targeted by integrist groups²³.

Later circulation

The film entered the canonical list 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die⁵. A 4K restoration by the laboratory Éclair Classics for MK2, made with CNC support, returned it to French cinemas on 29 September 2021¹, and it streams on the Criterion Channel in the United States²⁴. Huppert, discussing her seven or eight films with Chabrol in later interviews, recalled that he never gave her direction on set and left her completely free²⁵.

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026