Claude Goretta‘s 1977 French picture, The Lacemaker (La Dentelliere), deals with a shy, gentle working-class girl (Isabelle Huppert) and a smart, unassuming college student (Yves Beneyton) who simply do not belong in a serious amatory affair with each other. It is also about lives that become empty and disillusioning and even nonsexual, and are thoroughly secular. After seeing it on videotape years ago, I was never able to see it again except recently on YouTube in an auto-translated version—not the best subtitles; in fact they’re worthless. Still, I’m grateful for it.

The film is an excellent one, splendidly, poetically directed by Goretta. There are beach scenes as lovely as the camera placement is inspired. There is dandy camera movement too (the crane shot) and meaningful fades to black. The Lacemaker derives from a novel by Pascal Laine. On its own, Goretta’s screenplay impresses. As in his film The Invitation, he loves his characters. Huppert and Beneyton are persuasive actors; Florence Giorgetti even more so.