Biester

Summary

Sophie, the new housemaid for the Lelièvre family, is reserved and unassuming. But she loses favour with her employers when she makes friends with the feisty postmistress, Jeanne, whom Monsieur Lelièvre doesn’t like. The two very different women are linked by dark secrets and when one of Sophie's is uncovered, she is fired. At Jeanne’s urging, she stands up to her employer. Aggressive, with a strong sense of class consciousness, Jeanne continues to spur on the escalating dispute...

In a black leather jacket and a plaid skirt cut way too short, Isabelle Huppert imbues her Breton street battler with a proletarian punk attitude. When she finally annihilates the bedchamber of her bourgeois adversaries, it seems driven by the same kind of overexuberant ardour that once led rock stars to destroy hotel rooms. For her fifth film (out of a total of seven) with Claude Chabrol at the helm, Huppert was awarded the Volpi Cup for Best Actress in Venice (along with Sandrine Bonnaire), as well as France's César film prize.

Source: 72. Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin (Catalogue)