Directed by Claude Chabrol • 1988 • France
One of the ugliest (and least discussed) sides of wartime France is showcased in Claude Chabrol's Story of Women. Isabelle Huppert stars as an impoverished mother who achieves success and a better life for herself and her children by performing clandestine abortions in 1941 France, only to run afoul of the Petain government's brutal ban against abortion, which it regarded as a "crime against the state."