Avortement clandestin!

As Pierre Chevalier was famous first for his coarse comedies,then ,in the seventies,for his pornographic movies ,it was easy to relegate "Avortement Clandestin!"(illegal abortion ) to the sex movies ghetto;and however,people who are looking for a dirty flick will not get something out of it.A three-minute orgy depiction when the heroine is raped and that's it.

Sophie is a working-class girl ;she is still living with her mom who has still two children to raise (the father left home four years before);she's got a boyfriend and she lives in the nine-to-five routine.

After her rape,she becomes pregnant;it's 1973 and it would be two more years before the Loi Veil.Rich people can get away with it,going to England or to the Netherlands ,or paying high prices to doctors who abuses their position (the honest doctor tells her so).There is no other course left to a poor girl but to see a street abortionist (a Violette Nozières of the seventies)in 1973.The screenplay does not pass over in silence the power of money and a scene showing rich bourgeois would not have been out of place in a Chabrol's work.As ,the Gendarme says,Sophie and his mom (given away to the authorities by holier-than-thou gossips )are decent people ;and if Sophie's discharged ,her voice over reminds us of other girls' fate,less happy than hers.

Scenes show women marching on the streets ,and the legalization of abortion,thanks to a great political woman,Simone Veil,was a big victory for women's lib.

Like this? try these ....

"Violette Nozières" Claude Chabrol

"L'Amour Violé " Yannick Bellon

(only for highbrows) "Masculin -Feminin " (Godard)