[3] She appeared in Godard's First Name: Carmen (1983) and alongside Charlotte Rampling in Joy Fleury's Tristesse et beauté (1985), an adaptation of Yasunari Kawabata's 1964 novel Beauty and Sadness.
Tim Lucas of Video Watchdog described Devils of Monza as "an elegantly crafted little gem...exquisitely photographed by Romano Albani [with] one of Pino Donaggio's most beautiful scores," and singled out Roussel's performance for praise: ...what is most lingering about the picture is what lingers about the films Roussel made with Godard: the devotion it pays to her Renaissant loveliness, which somehow looks as much at home in a nun's habit as in the basketball uniform she sports in Hail Mary.
There's a scene in Sacrilege where Sister Virginia, awakening to her sexuality under the smouldering, corruptive gaze of neighboring nobleman Giampaolo Osio (Alessandro Gassman), looks into a mirror and pulls her habit away from a cascade of long auburn hair.
The effect is nearly breathtaking... What makes this moment so powerful is how, in the space of these few frames, Roussel's expression subtly morphs from timid curiosity to combined arousal and sorrow -- she tears her habit like a hymen -- and then from awe at her mirror's disclosure of her sensuality to a final expression that shows contempt for her vanity as she feels herself empowered by it.
It is the moment of Sister Virginia's emergence as a complete, sexual being, body and soul, and by this point in the movie, we feel our heart breaking for her as it also pounds for her.
[12]Roussel's other film appearances include Yves Boisset's Bleu comme l'enfer (1986), Robert van Ackeren's The Venus Trap (1988), Raúl Ruiz's Dark at Noon (1993), Éric Rochant's The Patriots (1994), and Laurent Bénégui's Au petit Marguery (1995).