StunnaKrypto Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

Myron Clemons A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Lidia Draper Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

ranjna There is something very beautiful about it though I feel I can't just put my finger on it but it is super simple yet super effective and impacting movie and performance especially by Isabelle Huppert...she is so vulnerable, simple, sad and natural...

FilmCriticLalitRao Class differences are extremely detrimental to human relationships especially to relationships which involve love between a man and a woman.However hard one may try,one cannot really get rid of class differences in daily lives.Swiss film 'The Lacemaker' is sincere in its depiction of a tender love affair which was bound to fail from its inception.Based on a Goncourt prize winning novel by Pascal Lainé, 'La Dentellière' reveals actress Isabelle Huppert in one of the most sensible roles of her acting career.It is with great confidence and ease that she plays the role of a shy woman who is not too enthusiastic about getting into relationships with men.However,a chance meeting with an intelligent boy changes her life for good.La Dentellière succeeds as it depicts how vulnerable some women can be.It is neither anti women nor pro men but it has something for intelligent viewers who would like to be impartial judges of male female relationships.Those who have deep knowledge of French cinema would not fail in recognizing young actress Sabine Azéma playing a minor role.

writers_reign To revisit this exquisite performance from Isabelle Huppert is to forgive her the sleaziness of some of her recent choices. Like the other posters I have just read here this film - or rather this performance - has remained vivid in my memory since I saw it first on television some years ago. I bought the DVD in Paris last March and have just got around to playing it. Unfortunately it is offered without subtitles but dubbed into several languages so that any non-French speakers who have yet to see it will almost certainly lose out. There's one semi major hurdle to get over but when and if that is accomplished this is a semi-masterpiece. The film was made in 1977 and there is nothing to say that it is not also set at that time yet we have a pretty 18 year old girl who admits to being a virgin and a courtship which would do credit to a repressed English couple of the 1930s/40s/50s rather than a FRENCH couple in the 1970s. There is an equal lack of Passion between Huppert and Yves Benyeton, in fact Kevin McCarthy lookalike Benyeton is SO wooden we can't help wondering if he is REALLY a pod who somehow strayed from the set of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers on to THIS set. Throughout the acting of Huppert is Magnificent and leaves everyone else for dead. Huppert is not only one of the most beautiful but also one of the most Intelligent actresses working today and the way in which she suppresses her natural intelligence to play a colorless, unambitious, low self-esteemed teenager is little short of incredible. Goretta has chosen to end with a shot of Huppert looking straight into camera with a completely expressionless gaze reminiscent of Garbo in the last shot of Queen Christina. Whether by accident or design it's a comparison that Huppert can more than justify. One of the all-time great film performances.

Dennis Littrell I understand that this is the film that brought Isabelle Huppert, already the accomplished veteran of over 20 films and yet just 22-years-old, to the forefront of the French cinema. It is not hard to see why. She is apple sweet in her red hair and freckles and her pretty face and her cute little figure playing Pomme, a Parisian apprentice hairdresser. She is shy about sex and modest--just an ordinary French girl who hopes one day to be a beautician. Along comes François (Yves Beneyton) a tall, handsome, young intellectual from a petite bourgeois family who sweeps her off her feet.They set up housekeeping and eventually he gets around to introducing her to his family. Alas, Mom finds the girl "decent," and ...well, it's rather predictable. You should watch. I've seen the story a number of times, and I find it rather painful, especially because in this case Huppert is so incredibly sweet and adorable. It is a naturalistic love story, like something from a nineteenth century novel, sad, compelling, bittersweet and ultimately tragic in an all too familiar way.Claude Goretta's direction is lean and finely cut, and he does a great job with Huppert. There are moments of pure genius, especially the stunning final shot in which Pomme suddenly turns to the camera, on her face a vaguely hopeful, enigmatic expression. It lingers just long enough so that we realize this really is the end, and the lights are about to come up. The shot is especially effective because we can see the posters from Greece on the walls that reveal that what she just told François was a kind of proud make-believe story. Also very well done without undue emphasis is the scene where Pomme goes to him at the window in their apartment, presenting herself to him, so to speak, her naked little self so vulnerable, and he is not interested. Nothing more need to be said. It is like the turn in a sonnet: everything changes.Without the beguiling child-like, but deeply experienced and finely expressed performance by Mademoiselle Huppert, this film would still be good, but nothing special. She carries the film: her timing, her intense concentration, her sense of who she is and how she feels at every moment is just perfect. She is exquisite.For those of you familiar with the work of Isabelle Huppert, this is a film not to be missed.(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)