Women get revenge on heartless men in 'Chaos'

By LARRY WILLIAMS
HARTFORD COURANT
"When good women get mad, and get revenge!" That could be the name of a new Fox reality series, but it's more or less the substance of "Chaos" (2001), a French film by Coline Serreau in which a woman ignored by her busy, busy, busy husband teams up with an ex-hooker to get back at all the men who've hurt them.
It begins when Paul and Helene, late for a dinner engagement, come upon a prostitute running from three men. Paul locks the car doors as the woman begs for help, and she's beaten horribly, right in front of them. Paul then gets the blood washed off his car.
Helene, though, is nagged by guilt and hunts down the hooker, Noemie, in a hospital, where she's in a coma.
What develops is an alliance between the two as Noemie schemes to bring her attackers, pimps and underworld kingpins to justice, and Helene helps, liberating herself from her crummy marriage at the same time.
It's an immensely satisfying movie, the kind we don't get often enough, since filmmakers hesitate to give an audience what it craves -- revenge!