Marie (Isabelle Huppert) helps women have abortions in Nazi-occupied France, which turns out to be an unexpected income. However, she was arrested and sentenced to death by the time's reactionary government, looking for public examples to give to the nation.
Marie Latour (in reality her real name was Marie-Louise Giraud), was the last woman to be guillotined in France. The film tells this tragic story with dry realism, both in terms of the dialogues and the era's accurate reconstruction.
The film was in competion at the Italian 1988 Venice Film Festival. Isabelle Huppert won the Coppa Volpi award for best female interpretation, while outside conservative Catholic associations clamoured for the film to be withdrawn from distribution, for Marie's desperate prayer before being beheaded, accused by them fanatic groups to be 'blasphemous'.
The film was released anyway.
