Because the English-language dvds on offer were either inordinately expensive or abysmally reviewed for their quality I had to get this film in Spanish, which I do not speak. It didn't really matter since its message is not conveyed through dialogue. It might well have been made in the silent era, and been just as powerful. I must have seen it in about 1977, and it has been unforgettable.If there is a flaw to this story, which doesn't affect its quality, it is that Pomme (or Beatrice ?) is surely doomed from the outset. The ending can be seen coming from the very start, and it's thrown into relief by the girl's feisty fellow-hairdresser, Marylene, who bounces back from any reversal.In any case, impossible to give it less than 10/10.

For the first time in years I thought about this film today. I remember seeing it with my mother who thought it was only appropriate that Pomme's experience of sex outside marriage should have the result it did. I thought the whole thing was bit over the top at the time but in retrospect I think it makes sense, given the sort of girl she was that she would have a breakdown, given that she took the whole affair far more seriously than he did. In retrospect, I think it was actually a rather moving and touching experience, despite my hardened cynicism at the age of 20 when I thought I knew so much more about relationships than I really did. There's a bit of Pomme in most young women, I expect.

The student from Paris and his friends are intellectuals. He reads Le Monde. He is stamped by his background. The girl is in love with love. Everywhere she turns, there is love and passion evident, even through the hotel's thin walls. She only wishes to please and outwardly doesn't project herself as a self-regulated person. Her lower class background is clear before she goes on vacation where she meets the student. Although they stay in the same hotel, this is about the only thing they have in common beside the bed they share, but being removed from their normal lives just delays the obvious. Love is idyllic at first for everyone. She is hopelessly adrift among his friends in Paris and cannot communicate with them. This class based depiction is consistent with how many French view that one's birth divides a person from the other classes. The class-based system exists here in the South, but I have a feeling that passion and love and familiarity more readily breaks down barriers than those 30 years ago in France.This is a movie well worth seeing.

Who knows why we retain the memory of some films and others remain a forgotten blip. "The Lacemaker" stayed with me over the years. I thought Isabelle Huppert played a marvelous part, and the story line fascinated me. I can still feel the sadness of her character when she was rejected by her lover, and then paid the price for her addiction to him. Films like "Blade Runner," "Murmur of the Heart," "Experience Preferred but not Essential, " The Unbearable Lightness of Being," "Closely Watched Trains," and a host of other good films will always be special to me, but not as endearing as "La Dentelliere."