The Heiresses

The always luminous, Oscar-nominated Isabelle Huppert stars in this recently rediscovered and digitally restored drama set in Budapest in 1936, directed by renowned Hungarian filmmaker Márta Mészáros. Huppert plays a young Jewish seamstress named Irène, who is recruited by a much wealthier friend, Szilvia (Lili Monori), to conceive a baby with her military officer husband; Szilvia is unable to have children, and the inheritance to her sick father’s fortune is dependent upon her producing an heir. Meanwhile, the rise of Nazism has begun to poison Hungary’s ruling classes, complicating Irène’s entrée into high society and leading to the gradual dissolution of the women’s friendship. Laying bare the complicated processes of class, motherhood, inheritance, and fascism, Mészáros’s film is a gripping, impeccably acted depiction of how emotional entanglements are largely inextricable from the greater forces of history.