Le journal d'une femme de chambre

Plot synopsis:
In Normandy at the end of the 19th Century, a beautiful and ambitious young chambermaid named Célestine (Lea Seydoux) enters the service of her new employers, the Lanlaire family, which consists of a bitter wife and her perverted husband. Monsieur Lanlaire has a reputation for molesting and impregnating his chambermaids, while Madame Lanlaire is known for her domineering attitude over her servants and often fires her chambermaids. She also meets the other servants: Marianne, the overweight and homely cook and the mysterious, older Joseph (Vincent Lindon), the groom, who shares a mutual attraction with Célestine.
Throughout the film, Célestine reflects on her past positions, such as to a middle-aged woman with an elderly husband who was humiliated at a train customs stop after being forced to open a box revealing her dildo. Another significant post was her satisfying employment with the sickly young Georges and his kindly grandmother. Georges became infatuated with Célestine as she took care of him and after resisting his advances at first, Célestine has sex with him, only for him to succumb to his illness and die during the act, horrifying her. Numb from the experience, she leaves the position.
In the Lanlaire household, Célestine chafes under the demanding and often unreasonable Madame Lanlaire, who frequently derides Célestine for any delay or error and refuses to let her attend the funeral of her mother. Monsieur Lanlaire quickly sets his sights on Célestine, who rebuffs his advances while secretly plotting to manipulate him. The neighbor, Captain Mauger (Patrick d'Assumçao), who has apparently bequeathed his estate to the servant, Rose after his wife left him for sleeping with her, is also interested in her. Célestine also plots to use Capt Mauger for her own ambitions, but Rose becomes jealous after Capt Mauger kills his obedient pet ferret named Kleber after a comment Célestine makes about the pet.
Célestine finds respite in gossip at the house of the village abortionist and in commiserating with Marianne. In one conversation with Marianne, she learns that Marianne was attracted to one of her old masters, but was kicked out after becoming pregnant by him and was forced to kill her baby; later, she reveals that Monsieur Lanlaire has been raping her regularly and she must get an abortion done. One night, after talking with Marianne, Célestine hears agonized screams coming from the forest, which unsettle her.
The next day, she visits Joseph and learns that he is a rabid anti-Semite and propagates anti-Dreyfus propaganda on behalf of local priests. He dreams of owning a business where he can provide a rendezvous for militant right-wing nationalists and acknowledges that he needs a woman like Célestine to make his plan a success. Later, while gossiping with the other women, Célestine learns that a local prepubescent peasant girl was violently raped, disemboweled and murdered, explaining the screams Célestine had heard at night. Célestine suspects that Joseph is the murderer, as he could be placed at the scene of the crime, but this only makes her more fascinated with him.
Rose dies and Capt Mauger admits to Célestine that Rose had disappointed him after getting a servant of her own and failed to keep up the chores she had when she was a servant. He had hoped to die before her, as he had secretly made a second will nullifying the first, ensuring that Rose would inherit nothing. Capt Mauger offers for Célestine to work for him in the same work and sexual arrangement than Rose had with him, but Célestine only promises to think about it, satisfied with her manipulation of him.
Ultimately, she professes her attraction to Joseph and begs to join him. After having sex with her, he has Célestine assist him in the theft of the Lanlaire's silverware that would fund his plan, a theft which is blamed on a pair of famous French thieves. Joseph shoots dead both the dogs. Police start the probe into the dacoity. The police ask Lanlaires whether they suspected anyone from the household , especially Joseph but they give him a clean chit saying that he had been with them for 15 years and he is very devoted and trustworthy. The police get no clues even after several days of investigation. The case is closed unsolved. Joseph quits his position later and Célestine bides her time waiting for him, befriending Madame Lanlaire to get in her good graces before telling her that she is engaged to be married and must soon quit. One night, she sees Joseph's signal through her window and joins him, ruminating that she has been out-manipulated, acknowledging that he is a devil, but he has her completely in his grasp. They leave for Cherbourg and the carriage disappears into the darkness.

Tags: satire, revenge, psychedelic, murder, sadist

Review:
In the 30's, the witty, literate and quite sophisticated chambermaid Céléstine (Jeanne Moreau) comes from Paris to work for the dysfunctional Monteil family in the country, more specifically for the fetishist on shoes and maniac for cleaning Monsieur Rabour (Jean Ozenne).
He is an incipient Nazi, a xenophobic anti-Semitic man who worships brute force, an ignorant man that every French movie-goer knows will be a Nazi-collaborator once France is under the occupation.The story is seen from the point of view of Celestine, a chambermaid of some sophistication (and an abiding, but understandable duplicity), a Parisian who has come to work for the family in the country.
Luis Buñuel, the man considered Spain's finest filmmaker and revered master of surrealism by both critics and film historians, made a surprising change of style in the first of the series of masterpiece she did in France during his last years.
However, this does not mean the movie is bad as many may believe; quite the opposite, "Le Journal d'eune Femme de Chambre" is a perfect showcase of Buñuel's finest film-making style, ambiguous and stylish, like the master's own vision of life.The plot follows Celestine (Jeanne Moreau), an urban young woman moving to country in 30s France to work as a chambermaid for the Monteils, a rich family with a few dark secrets.
Between the constant advances of sexually insatiable Monsieur Monteil (Michel Piccoli), the always vigilant eye of his materialist wife (Françoise Lugagne) and the shoe fetish of old Monsieur Rabour (Jean Ozenne); Celestine makes her way through this collection of living portraits of the most bizarre human nature.With a plot like this it would easy to believe this is a movie where the high class is demonized and the poor sanctified, but this is not the case here.
Buñuel and his cast manage to create believable and realistic characters.Jeanne Moreau gives a brilliant performance as Celestine.
The rest of the cast is also very good and together with the witty script complete a superb character-driven movie.Buñuel's masterful direction creates a film that, while completely focused on the characters, is still filled with his usual symbolism.
Jean Moreau, the beautiful star of Truffaut's 'Jules And Jim' and countless other Euro art film favourites, gives a brilliant performance as the enigmatic Celestine, maid to The Monteils, a very odd family living in pre-War France.
Having said all this, however, I think that LE JOURNAL D'UNE FEMME DA CHAMBRE aka DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID (1964) is the weakest of the final ten feature films Bunuel made during the most fruitful period of his career (between 1961 and 1977)  if such a choice were to be made, that is.Don't get me wrong; I do think that LE JOURNAL is an excellent film and would probably be considered a bona-fide masterpiece if it were made by a lesser director.
There is much to enjoy in the film: Jeanne Moreau's superb central performance as the opportunistic Celestine stricken by an unexpected sense of moral duty prompting her to nail the killer of the child even if she has to marry him to do so; Michel Piccoli's hilarious turn as the eternally insatiable but perennially unsatisfied master of the household who, when his sexual advances towards Celestine are turned down by the latter, has to make do with the ugly-looking house-maid; the aged father-in-law who invites Celestine into his room to read for him, all the while indulging in his foot fetish; the sadistic manservant who thinks nothing of violating and murdering innocent little girls while nurturing dreams of sealing his independence with the purchase of a pub all his own and with Celestine as his partner; the eccentric neighbour who sabotages their garden at every turn and yet yearns for Celestine's companionship, etc.
In fact, as was also the case with the later Bunuel adaptation, the performances here are all first-rate: Hurd Hatfield as the idealistic young son who falls hopelessly in love with Celestine; Judith Anderson as the lady of the house firmly in control of every situation but with some strange alliances of her own; Irene Ryan as a timid scullery maid; Reginald Owen as the weak-willed master of the house perpetually harassed by his wife's demands; and particularly Burgess Meredith (who also wrote the screenplay!) as the half-crazed and shell-shocked retired Army Captain who is their neighbor; but especially Francis Lederer whose portrayal of the devilish manservant Joseph lusting after Celestine while scheming behind the back of his oppressive masters is quite chilling.
Doing some more reading on this film after watching it a couple of times, I found out that there are those who think more highly of Renoir's DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID than I was previously led to believe.
As a matter of fact, I think a similarly fascinating comparison could be made between (incidentally, another favorite director of mine) Josef von Sternberg's final film with Marlene Dietrich, THE DEVIL IS A WOMAN (1935) and Luis Bunuel's cinematic swan song, CET OBSCUR OBJET DU DESIR aka THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE (1977)  both of which were adapted from the same source material: Pierre Louys' 'La Femme Et Le Pantin'..
They are always going on about the republicans, ours would fit right in with the anti-semitism and xenophobia.Among all this is the classic acting of Jeanne Moreau, a classy chambermaid, who is even willing to marry a fascist to prove him guilty of murder and rape.
L'ange exterminateur",Bunuel's precedent work had puzzled the audience.The director himself said:"the best explanation for this movie is that there is none.""Le journal d'une femme de chambre" is a return to a more accessible style.It depicts a rotten microcosm where Jeanne Moreau might come as an ange exterminateur.Bunuel's favorite subjects are all here:the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie,here represented by a ludicrous threesome : a husband (Piccoli) whose only pastime is sex,his holier-than-thou wife who tells the priest her husband is so lecherous he wants to make "it" twice a...week!,and the old father,fetishist to the core who enjoys the shiny boots of leather.In parallel,Bunuel shows a sinister gamekeeper(probably Georges Géret's best part),a little girl's assassin.This character , a right wing diehard, is not a man from a distant past,he's still going on in today's France where some people keep on screaming " death to the scum" In his room full of"long live the army" posters,he still thinks he's got God on his side as he wants to relieve the world of "inferior " races such as the Jews.This character is one of the most obnoxious in the whole Bunuel canon.Bunuel's sexual symbols are always here :snails on the raped girl's thighs ;the old man,dead in his bed,clutching his dear boots.The two scenes pack a real wallop  for they are placed side by side.Jeanne Moreau does not look like a chamber maid (a character tells her so).She 's not like the mighty ones and the poor ones around her,her almost deadpan attitude -and the way she reads the old man's book- speaks volumes .And even if the sinners escape   unharmed, the last picture heralds the coming of the exterminating angel..
The Diary of a Chambermaid is one of Bunuel's most perverse films, in the sense that it deals with decadent behaviors and assorted execrations.
A double-bill of two films transmuting Octave Mirbeau's source novel LE JOURNAL D'UNE FEMME DE CHAMBRE onto the celluloid, made by two cinematic titans: Jean Renoir and Luis Buñuel, 18 years apart.
Renoir's version is made in 1946 during his Hollywood spell, starring Paulette Goddard as our heroine Celestine, a Parisian girl arrives in the rural Lanlaire mansion to work as the chambermaid in 1885, barely alighting from the train, Celestine has already been rebuffed by the haughty valet Joseph (an excellently surly Lederer), and confides to the also newly arrived scullery maid Louise (a mousy and dowdy Irene Ryan) that she will do whatever in her power to advancing her social position and firmly proclaims that love is absolutely off limits, and the film uses the literal diary- writing sequences as a recurrent motif to trace Celestine's inner thoughts.
The same adjective "comedic", "vibrant" certainly doesn't pertain to Buñuel's version, here the time-line has been relocated to the mid-1930s, Celestine (played by Jeanne Moreau with toothsome reticence and ambivalence) more often than not, keeps her own counsel, we don't even once see her writing on the titular diary, she works for Mr. and Mrs Monteil (Piccoli and Lugagne), who are childless but live with Madame's father Mr. Rabour (Ozenne, decorous in his condescending aloofness), an aristo secretly revels in boots fetish in spite of his dotage.
Here the bourgeois combo is composed of a frigid and niggardly wife, a sexed-up and henpecked husband (Mr. Piccoli makes for a particularly farcical womanizer, armed with the same pick-up line), a seemingly genteel but kinky father, and Captain Mauger (Ivernel), here is less cartoonish but no less uppity, objectionable and erratic; whereas Joseph (Géret), is a rightist, anti-Semitic groom whose perversion is to a great extent much more obscene (rape, mutilation and pedophilia are not for those fainted hearts).
Amongst those anathemas, Celestine must put on her poker face, or sometimes even a bored face to be pliant (she even acquiesces to be called as Marie which Goddard thinks better of in Renoir's movie), she is apparently stand-offish but covertly rebellious, and when a heinous crime occurs (a Red Riding Hood tale garnished with snails), she instinctively decides to seek justice and tries insinuating her way into a confession from the suspect through her corporeal submission, only the perpetrator is not a dolt either, unlike Renoir's Joseph, he knows what is at stakes and knows when to jettison his prey and start anew, that is a quite disturbing finale if one is not familiar with an ending where a murderer gets away with his grisly crime.
This movie is more rubbish from the perverted mind of Bunuel, who like most men of the left, is great a criticizing western society and the things that made it strong and workable but never offers solutions that might better it weak points.
Classes differences and human weaknesses have been nicely portrayed by director Luis Buñuel in 'Diary of a Chambermaid'..
French writer Octave Mirbeau's novel 'The diary of a Chambermaid' had achieved immense success due to its association with Dreyfuss affair.It was director Luis Buñuel's natural choice for a film where he could talk in detail about sexual perversity,class differences and human weaknesses.It can be said with certainty that Buñuel has succeeded as his film gives viewers plenty of opportunities to learn more about rich as well as poor people and their idiosyncrasies especially strange circumstances which enable them to behave in given situations.From a cinematographic point of view,this film's fantastic cast has made a lot of difference in the way its message got conveyed.Actor Georges Géret is able to do enormous justice to his role of Joseph as he has villainous looks.
As she was already hailed as a 'sex symbol', actress Jeanne Moreau did not have to work too hard to portray the role of Célestine,a woman who makes good use of her sexual charm to win men around her.Actor Michel Piccoli didn't waste any chances to excel himself as the sympathetic representative of a corrupt,bourgeois society..
This wonderful film seems deceptively simple at first, as Jeanne Moreau plays an attractive maid, coming from Paris to work for an eccentric family in the country, and begins to interact with the various family members and other servants.
The first time I saw Diary of a Chambermaid I did like it, but I didn't find it as fulfilling as some of Luis Bunuel's other later films made in France.
Like more than a few other Bunuel films, some of them in France and others in Mexico, the style Bunuel uses for Diary of a Chambermaid is very controlled, not static but rather formal and, in its paradoxical way to Bunuel's intentions, restrained.
There isn't really a specific story as much as a series of events leading Celestine (the always beautiful Jeanne Moreau) through her time as maid for the Monteils and up to finally breaking free of their own repressive ways.This isn't made really clear until later in the film, including what must have been a 'hot' scene in 1964 for French and other audiences as Moreau is in some kinky maid-wear (it's one of my favorite scenes from the film).
The goods that come with Diary of a Chambermaid, as envisioned by Bunuel, is really in him seeing through the conventional- which he puts forward almost TOO well- and finding enough to criticize and have little bits of fun with.
It's not a surreal-style movie in the Bunuel mode, but he still makes some time to not let anyone off the hook; Celestine does do an about-face from how she previously acted, though so much has happened with the other characters that it's not too much of a surprise.In fact, it's on a very subtle level nearly reaches the gleeful vulgarity and near moral decay of Bunuel's masterwork Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.
The film makes an unusual and perceptive study of human morality  the situations depicted in the film may be exaggerated and set in another era, but Luis Bruñel manages to strike an easy resonance with us-the viewers.Although the film spends a lot of time showing the bourgeois and their entourage, the film is mainly concerned with the morally ambiguous chambermaid, Célestine (played by Jeanne Moreau) and the strange servant Joseph.
A maid (Jeanne Moreau) goes to stay with new people, which include a bitch wife, her cheating husband and her father who has a boot fetish.
It's got everything I love Bunuel's films for  sinister atmosphere, darker than dark humor, the strange characters living lives of sexual, religious, and social repressions.
Jeanne Moreau, one of the greatest actresses France ever produced, as a titular chambermaid, Celestine adds to the film's many pleasures.
There is also a neighbor, an ex-officer who hates Monteils and loves damaging and breaking his neighbors' things and property."Diary of a Chambermaid" (among many things) was able to show the absolute evil on the raise in the character of Joseph, the farm-laborer, who is sexually attracted to Celestine, a cruel, cold-blooded rapist-murderer and the fascist in such subtle yet scary way that Bertolucci should have watched and studied it for his "1900"..
Working with his collaborator, Jean-Claude Carriere, Bunuel adapted Octave Mirbeau's novel, which by the way, had already been brought to the screen by Jean Renoir, years before this film went into production.
This is what could be considered Luis Bunuel's most realistic work, as he tells a straight forward story with only slight detours into the realm of his beloved surrealism."Diary of a Chambermaid", which takes place at the end of the XIX century in the novel, is set in rural France in the early thirties.
Luis Bunuel's Diary of a Chambermaid places a stone-faced Jeanne Moreau in a country house filled with perverts and watches as she drops her moral standards to inconceivable lows.
Luis Buñuel's stunning film stars Jeanne Moreau & Georges Géret in a clever battle of wills.
Diary of a Chambermaid opened the later French period of Luis Bunuel (1964-1977) during which he made his most well known films such as Belle de Jour, That Obscure Object of Desire and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.
It's a film about fight of the classes, fascism and a satire of the decay of the French society.Set in early 1930's; a new chambermaid, Céléstine (Jeanne Moreau) arrives to the Monteil mansion.
Soon she gets to know the bizarre family full of odd characters; Madame Monteil who seems to be more interested in taking care of their family's furniture than her husband, Monsier Monteil who isn't interested in anything but hunting and Madame's father who is a shoe-fetishist.Céléstine is in between of two worlds; the city and the country, the working class and the bourgeoisie.
On the contrary, the woods symbolize the wild side of man where one's desires and passions run wild, where rules and standards are cut off and, where the rabbits, wild boars and snails are out of control.It's a very clever film - attack on the bourgeoisie, a common subject for Bunuel but he was never as cruel, ruthless and pessimist about it as in Diary of a Chambermaid.
There's not a single character in Luis Bunuel' "Diary of a Chambermaid" that exudes sympathy.
She's the newly hired chambermaid from Paris and working for a rich aristocratic family, the Monteils, she's the unlikely revealer of the mentalities that poisoned France in the mid-30's and that only waited for a catalysis to burst out, the worst way, foreshadowing the worst that was still to happen in the next decade.The gallery of characters who occupy the film is depressing indeed, the wife, Madame Monteil, is a dry, childless and frigid woman who's not keen on sex because of pelvic pain, her husband played by Michel Piccoli is a frustrated man who can only satisfy his sexual urges on any woman that comes at range.
Bunuel beautifully conveyed that feeling."Diary of a Chambermaid" is perhaps a less colorful version of the same world Renoir showed in "The Rules of the Game", as there's no game in the film, unless you mean the game of hypocrisy, frivolity disguised under respectability and unhappiness, the only person who might end up happy after all is the veteran who married Célestine, he was old, she was young and plain, together they deserve each other.
Our main character, the decent chambermaid (played by Jeanne Moreau) tries to do the right thing although by the end of the film the utter futility of this is revealed.When I watched the film, I tried to ignore the fact that I do not share the director's world view.
There may be those who would describe this as Rules Of The Game Lite dealing as it does with the mores of French society in the 1930s but one crucial difference is that Renoir made his film AT THE TIME whereas Bunuel was working a quarter of a century later.