Une Femme Respectable: An excellent, thought-provoking movie
Une Femme Respectable: Recently, with the aid of English sub-titles, I watched Une Femme Respectable , a 2023 movie by Bernard Emond. Set in Trois-Rivières during the Great Depression of the 1930s, this film is about a woman who hasn’t had the life she once hoped for, but tries to be a good person nevertheless. She is rewarded in a way she never expected to be. Rose Lemay is an attractive, modestly dressed, middle-aged woman who has inherited a pleasant but not elaborate home, and some money, from her late parents. In her parlour there are wedding and family photos, and as well, a table-top sculpture of a woman who might represent Diana the Huntress. The Parisian sculptor, Jean-Antoine Houdon, created a famous bronze statue of this goddess in 1790, and copies may have found their way into middle-class Quebecc parlours of the 1930s. As the novel opens, Rose tells her hired-girl that she will served tea to her guests herself. In her parlour are the priest and her lawyer, who hav