Inserting accented characters in replace mode

Hello everyone.
I'm using aspell to spell-check a french document, written with utf-8
encoding. While all accented characters get displayed properly in the
text and in the suggestions, if I try to replace a word, I can't write
accents: typing an accute `e' will simply produce a space in
the replace field. I tried reading the manual and googling around for
word of a similar problem but haven't found anything. Would anybody
know what's going on?

Thanks in advance.
Eric Guindon