As carefully spun as fine lace. Huppert plays Beatrice, a shy and passive young woman nicknamed "Pomme" ("Apple") who travels to the Normandy coast with her best friend Marylene (Giorgetti) and meets Francois (Beneyton), a middle-class literature student. He is attracted to the sheepish,
freckle-faced Beatrice even though there is an obvious difference in class and education.
They become lovers and get an apartment together in Paris. They are genuinely in love, but their differences begin to surface. Marylene tries to convince Beatrice to do more with her life than be a beautician. She is content, however, with simply loving Francois. When he brings her home to meet
the family, he realizes that he should be with a woman who shares his interests in journalism. They soon drift apart, and finally he asks her to leave. Beatrice becomes ill and soon is admitted to a mental hospital. Her mother writes to Francois, asking him to pay her daughter a visit. At the
urging of his friends, he agrees. Their bittersweet reunion leads the film to its conclusion.
A delicately wrought yet devastating look at the pain of love, THE LACEMAKER boasts one of the earliest major performances from the 22-year-old Huppert, who has gone on to become one of Europe's most breathtakingly prolific actresses, appearing in ENTRE NOUS and two Godard films, EVERY MAN FOR
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