La cérémonie

Plot synopsis:
La Cérémonie tells the story of a young woman, Sophie Bonhomme (Sandrine Bonnaire), who is hired as a maid by the Lelièvre family. The Lelièvres live in an isolated mansion in Brittany. The family consists of four members: Catherine (Jacqueline Bisset) and Georges, the parents, who have no children together, but one each from previous marriages. Gilles is Catherine's and her ex-husband's son. He is a lonely teenager who loves reading and has a passion for arts in general. Melinda is Georges' and his late wife's daughter. She studies at a university and only spends the weekends at home, where she invites her boyfriend Jérémie. The household chores are excessive for Catherine – who owns her own art gallery – so she requires a maid's help and hires Sophie. Throughout the film Sophie avoids using the dishwasher, refuses to take driving lessons, buys fake eyeglasses, and has trouble giving a cashier the correct change. The viewer finds out later that Sophie is illiterate and has a history of violence since she is believed to have killed her handicapped father, or at least not to have rescued him from the fire she might have set in his house.
Once in the small village, Sophie meets Jeanne (Isabelle Huppert), the postmistress, who occasionally works in a charity and reads a lot. However, Jeanne proves to be a bad influence on the maid since she is jealous and aggressive towards a lot of people, including the Lelièvres, whose mail she vandalises. She also has a violent history. The two friends meet regularly either for a charity project (that they end up ruining) or for a film; television being Sophie's main pastime. Sophie is treated rather nicely at the Lelièvres, who mean well towards her, but their patronizing attitude and the affection they have for each other create a feeling of jealousy and frustration both in Sophie and in Jeanne. This frustration reaches its climax when Georges fires Sophie for attempting to blackmail Melinda, who found out about her illiteracy. It is what triggers the climax of the film, which sees Sophie and Jeanne seize Georges’ shotguns and murder the family who were watching an opera on television.
Jeanne leaves the crime scene and is killed in a car accident by the priest who had fired her from the charity she worked for. Sophie, for her part, walks away from the house after having wiped their fingerprints off the guns, making her way through the police squads at the accident. The end credits begin with the music of the opera that is being played back by a policeman on Melinda's tape-recorder, which Jeanne stole and put in her car. At the end of the credits, the gunshots can be heard on the tape and then the voices of Jeanne and Sophie, constituting evidence against them. Chabrol presents an ambiguous view of culture and class conflict in this film, which he jokingly called "the last Marxist film."

Tags: murder, violence, flashback, insanity, romantic, suspenseful

Review:
I've seen seven or eight of his dozens of films, but I remember them quite well, especially "Violette Nozière", "Le boucher" and "La rupture." Many years after these, "La cérémonie" is a serene work, the construction of a mature man who avoids making artificial judgments or explaining motivations of his characters, and tending traps to his audiences to keep them interested in what he's narrating.
While Hitchcock could almost ruin his forays into psychological landscapes (like Simon Oakland explaining Norman Bates' behavior in "Psycho" or placing clues that led to nowhere) and very rarely treated social issues, Chabrol prevents from recurring to psychological clichés and gives us subtle gestures to illustrate the "class struggle": the way the rich daughter returns the handkerchief to the post-office clerk after cleaning her filthy hands; the way the post-office clerk throws back an envelope to the bourgeois father.
A few times Chabrol is not so subtle and he shows tension even between persons of the same class: the way the poor maid and the post-office clerk despise the miserly charity of an old Catholic couple, the way the rich father protests when giving his son a ride to school...
When the climax arrives -the daughter of the bourgeois family discovers (part of) the maid's secret and, in return, the maid reveals she also knows something about the young woman- there is little else Chabrol can add, but only guide us to the conclusion.
Claude Chabrol,  one of the leading lights of the French New Wave, faded into a series of unimaginative throwaway flicks and obscurity (peppered with moments of worthiness such as Blood Sisters )until storming once again into the limelight with this claustrophobic psycho-thriller adaptation.Like Heavenly Creatures and Fun this film is anchored around the destructively intense relationship between two female leads: the apparently insipid family housemaid Sophie (Sandra Bonnaire) and the sparky but cumulatively obnoxious postmistress Jeanne (Isabelle Huppert).
Jeanne describes all her - increasingly erratic - behaviour as "a good deed" and the equaly unstable Sophie believes her.Every role is acted impeccably by some of the leading lights of French cinema.
Along with Bonnaire and Huppert, arguably the best French actresses working today,  Jacqueline Bisset plays the bourgeouse lady of the house for whom Jeanne works.
Having said this, Chabrol, with his distinctly French sensibilities and post nouvelle vague expertise brings other qualities to the story and makes this a remarkable film.
Even Bisset's family don't come off well with their selfishly consumereist and blinkered middle class lifestyles.This and the high degree of audience manipulation means the film leaves a bad taste in the mouth but there's no denying it's an egregious work of art..
Like I've already stated, while watching this movie, you get the feeling that something sinister is waiting around the corner, your just not really sure what it is going to be or how it's going to manifest.Sandrine Bonnaire, Isabelle Huppert and Jacqueline Bisset are all excellent in their roles and carry their performances very well.
This film provided Chabrol with plenty of opportunities to criticize the disaffected bonhomie of the Levlievre family, but at times his presentation of some members of the Levlievres actually enlists our sympathy and therefore strikes a blow to the validity of his critique of French bourgeoisie values.
In this character study of two hateful middle-aged women (not so middle-aged in the movie, however, as in the novel by Ruth Rendell) we are made to fathom the bad that may befall the good.Claude Chabrol's direction is clean, crisp and uncluttered--which isn't always the case, witness his Madame Bovary (1991), which is a bit too leisurely and L'Enfer (1993) which muddles a whole lot.
Anyway this is more like his quietly brilliant Une affaire de femmes (1988) with a fine script and striking performances by Sandrine Bonnaire and Isabelle Huppert, handsomely supported by Jacqueline Bisset, Jean Pierre Cassel and the very pretty Virginie Ledoyen.Bonnaire plays Sophie, an intense taciturn woman harboring dark secrets, whom the Leliévres have hired to cook and keep house at their country home.
They exist in bourgeois heaven avec matrimonial bliss with two teenagers, a family so closely knit and so charmingly together that they watch a two-part production of Mozart's Don Giovanni on TV, just the four of them cosily on the couch.Well, this sort of unobtainable happiness doesn't sit well with Jeanne (Huppert) who is a lowly postal clerk living alone whose past includes the (accidental?) killing of her four-year-old daughter.
The upper-class owner of a gallery Catherine Lelievre (Jacqueline Bisset) hires the efficient and quiet maid Sophie Bonhomme (Sandrine Bonnaire) for working in the family manor in the countryside of France.
Georges fires Sophie and she returns to the house later with Jeanne on the rampage with tragic consequences."La Cérémonie" is one of the best films by Claude Chabrol and it is still impressive after watching many years after the release.
Towards the end, things became ominous, as Sophie and Jeanne, the maid and the postal clerk, happened to have both been, coincidentally, accused of crimes and were acquitted.
The performances, especially by Isabelle Huppert and Sandrine Bonnaire, are magnificent, and Chabrol's direction is masterful and rigorous without being showy.
The film is directed by the great Claude Chabrol and based on the novel 'A Judgement in Stone' by Ruth Rendell.
While out in the village one day, she meets Jeanne; a post office worker jealous of anyone who is of a higher social standing than herself, and the two strikes up a friendship that eventually has a tragic result.The setting that Chabrol has chosen for the film really benefits the story as the isolation allows the director to focus purely on the characters.
Also you knew they were both up to no good when they seemed to bond closer to the beginning of the movie although Sophie is more reluctant to reveal much about getting away with murder which wasn't "proven" than Isabel Huppert's character.
It seems like the characters were all connected in a commentary of class, charity and the attitudes present in this very "homogenous" (to use Jacqueline Bisset's character to describe the opera they later watch) French society-- like the priest, the people donating old clothes and the sort of hypocrisy of the Catholic Church feeling guilty about "helping the poor"--characters over and over saying "it's good to help the poor" yet the two main "bad girl" characters are volunteers at a church not because they are religious but because they want the old cast offs from the rich.
But Chabrol chooses to let the story develop differently, taking his time to let us discover the motive for Sophie's discontent, and leaving the ending as a grim surprise.Chabrol jokingly refers to LA CEREMONIE as "the last Marxist film," because it deals with the perceived conflict between the haves and the have-nots.
(I thought more than once of the Leftist rhetoric that creates the kind of attitude shown by Sophie and her friend: the hatred of the rich simply because of what they own, the emphasis on the unfairness of class differences, and the feeling of entitlement to whatever one can get by whatever means.) But it is really more of an anti- Marxist film, because the bourgeois characters come across as fairly normal, orderly, likable individuals, while the "lower-class" characters are petty, jealous, and most definitely unhinged.
Chabrol's plan was similar in "la ceremonie" to that of "la rupture" (1971).Take a detective story (Charlotte Armstrong for "la rupture"(the balloon man),Ruth Rendell for "la ceremonie"(A judgement in stone),then give it a "social satire" flavor.He did it all right in Armstrong's case which was a pure thriller.Rendell's case is much more different,since she is a much superior writer than her late American colleague."A judgement in stone" is a captiving novel,very subtile,with interesting characters.The social critic is implicit,but sitting on the fence;the bourgeois are sympathetic people,their daughter's proposal to teach the maid to read is sincere.But Rendell makes us feel the gap between this cosy intellectual life in which you enjoy operas and the illiterate world of the maid where books are enemies.
A lot of the psychological side eludes C.Chabrol.First of all,Sandrine Bonnaire was not the character.She's much too beautiful.(A young Shelley Winters would have fit the bill quite well!)In the novel,the heroine was some kind of village idiot with empty eyes who was not realizing her social condition.The same goes for I.Huppert,much too attractive to play her crude friend.Jean-Pierre Cassel and Jacqueline Bisset,on the other hand, are credible bourgeois and make up a bit for the weakness of the casting.
Slow-burn, I mean, that it doesn't start out looking like anything special: a maid is hired by a wealthy French family in a village, with a family (mother, father, son, sometimes-around daughter) who are decent folks but, let's face it, rich.
Chabrol leaves these questions about her in little slivers, like a cake of character left here, a little there.It's tricky, because in the first half hour of the film, when it's mostly just Sophie at the house with the Lelievre family, she seems decent enough, if a little 'odd' and hooked on watching TV, no matter what it is.
But when Jeanne enters the picture it starts to unravel bit by bit, until Sophie, after blackmailing the daughter of the household (both have things to hide but Melinda is blood so that trumps all), is let go, just says 'screw it' and does whatever she wants with her best friend.
His wife, played by Jacqueline Bisset, is more understanding and gives her a chance, then Sophie meets the town's post office clerk, Jeanne, who is coarse and a rebel and dislikes the family.
Very odd relationships evolve when a quiet young girl who seems enormously pliable is hired by a very smart, liberal woman in need of help at her isolated estate; the acting is first rate, with Sandrine Bonnaire quietly unsettling, and quirky Isabella Huppert disturbing as her friend, a nosy post office worker.
The music of Mozart floats through the elegant setting where Bonnaire is hired, contrasting with the garish noise that emits from the second hand television which she has been loaned for her dark attic room; Director Chabrol assumes his audience is adult, isn't after explosions and graphic sex, but be warned that there is disturbing content in this film which might disturb some viewers.
A Best Actress César for Isabelle Huppert, and six more nominations including Best Actress Sandrine Bonnaire, Best Supporting Actor Jean-Pierre Cassel, and Best Supporting Actress Jacqueline Bisset, along with nominations for writing, directing, and Best Film.
There weren't any categories left for Virginie Ledoyen (8 Women, The Valet), who was also great in the film.Sophie (Bonnaire) goes to work as a maid for the Lelievre's and tries to hid the fact that she is illiterate.
If "Ceremonie" doesn't have the absolute perfection of "Creatures", it comes very close, resulting in an intriguing and more than surprising crime drama.Based on a novel by Ruth Rendell, the film tells the story of a maid wonderfully played by Sandrine Bonnaire, who is hired by a rich family to work at their house.
Claude Chabrol builds a more than surprising story, with great character development, complexity, some twists and a simply fabulous ending, which remains in the mind of the audience for some time."La Ceremonie" is a must-see for all its qualities.
Sandrine Bonnaire stars as the shy, odd new maid of the Lelievre family (which includes Jean-Pierre Cassel and Jacqueline Bisset).
I was intrigued by this French film, not least because of its unexpected climax.The performances are more than competent but not outstanding, although Jacqueline Bisset and Isabelle Huppert stand out.There are many interesting social comments within the film and it leaves the viewer with a sense of unease at the open-ended questions it poses..
Chabrol is a master of subtle storytelling, and even though you know exactly how the film will end right from the first few frames, he still manages to work up some suspense and creepiness.
Great direction by Claude Chabrol and the acting is brilliant by  Isabelle Huppert and Sandrine Bonnaire as the two social misfits.
Chabrol in this film like "Thank you for the chocolate",explores wickedness as a latent hidden thing,we will never know the intention of people,we can't categorize people,good and evil,kind and bad person just for references and appearance;it's a more complex subject and i think"le ceremonie" shows that.Isabelle Huppert coldness is perfect for the role, and Claude Chabrol proves once again,that he is the best of French Cinema..
Why does the husband want to fire Sophie so quickly.In short there is no good motivation for the charaterizations and when the big moment comes we are saying finally.Compare that to the early Chabrol film Le Boucher.
"La Cérémonie" tells the story of a young woman, Sophie Bonhomme (Sandrine Bonnaire), who is hired as a maid by the Lelièvre family.
Catherine Lelievre (Jacqueline Bisset) hires quiet Sophie Bonhomme (Sandrine Bonnaire) as a maid to her isolated family country home.
After a few days Sophie meets a girl who works at the village's post office (Isabelle Huppert) and they become close friends.
And so the story goes till we get to the final sequence (that, of course, I'm not gonna mention here)...I can't be that objective about a movie made by Claude Chabrol and performed (god bless her!) by Isabelle Huppert; but I'll tell you that this is not one of my favourite films from the french filmmaker.
Sophie and Isabelle Hubert as the postal Jeanne spend the first 95 minutes of the film building a Thelma and Louise feminist empowerment through senseless violence relationship which finally boils over in the last extended scene.
The taciturn housekeeper Sophie (a chilling Sandrine Bonnaire) just hired by an upper class family is indeed a little odd but ordinary enough.
The pleasure of watching this film is in the gradual discovery of the dark, sinister inside of the human mind and the almost imperceptible but very real mounting of tension culminating in a devastating conclusion.One additional bonus to me, who is not a regular follower of the French movie scene, is seeing Jacqueline Bisset (playing the elegant, chic employer) still retaining much of her charm 25 years (the time this movie was made) after Airport (1970)..
Taking a look at some French Videos that my dad had picked up a few years ago for 10p each (!) I spotted a flick from auteur film maker Claude Chabrol.Having some good memories of watching the The Ruth Rendell Mysteries TV show with my mum and dad,I decided that it was time to witness Chabrol read Rendell.The plot:Struggling to keep a balance in life,the Lelievre family decide to hire Sophie La Bonne as an in-house maid,who can do all the chores that are just too demanding for them.Largely keeping to herself,Bonne gets a close view on the inner workings of the Lelièvre household,from husband and wife Georges and Catherine enjoying all the luxuries of life,whilst sweet,innocent daughter Melinda secretly gets close to her boyfriend.Quietly moved on to the small town after the "strange" death of her 4 year old daughter, Jeanne La Postière works in the post office.Viewing the Lelievre's bourgeoisie lifestyle in a less than approving manner, Postière winds them up by messing with their mail,which soon leads to postière crossing paths with Bonne,who decides that they should both give the Lelievre's a special delivery.View on the film:Gliding round the Lelievre household,co-writer/( along with Caroline Eliacheff) director Claude Chabrol & cinematographer Bernard Zitzermann drape the title in a blazing hot sun which blinds the Lelievre's from getting a full view of Bonne's growing dislike for them.
I have the most polarised feeling towards this Claude Chabrol's 1995 crime-drama based on Ruth Rendell's novel A JUDGEMENT IN STONE, it is a sterling slow-burner charting the irreconcilable contradictions between upper class and working class, and climaxes with a real unsettling crime asking for shock value, but one cannot immune to Chabrol's rather deliberate demonisation of proletariats by bluntly depicting those two low-class women, the maid Sophie (Bonnaire) and the postmistress Jeanne (Isabelle), as such nihilistic sociopaths, especially Sophie, who is so preoccupied by the shame that she is illiterate (which seems to be utterly unnecessary for a young girl, it is never too late to learn from the scratch, but no, she doesn't want to overcome her shortcoming, instead she hides it as if this is the final defence towards the collapse of her entire world) and acts like a complete ingrate, contrasting the benevolent Lelievre family, at least no one can nitpick their behaviours are over the boundary.
Jeanne is the black sheep in the local community, a bad influence to antagonize Sophie against her employers, but unsubtly, they both have inexplicable accident/murder precedent, Jeanne seems be more like a fuse than an enabler for Sophie's final outburst, Huppert casts her versatile magnetism at her own sweet will, freewheeling in her loosey-goosey scorn towards the bourgeois-and-religious sanctimony and naturalistic-ally eloquent in her insinuating and sweet-talking, a proficient scene-stealerJean-Pierre Cassel and Jacqueline Bisset both tread a fine line between sympathetic and supercilious as the typical upscale couple, to contrast their ultimate victim identities and illicit compassion, so are Ledoyen and Merlet, who plays Gilles, Catherine's teenage son, they are no saints but together stand for a perfect family borne out of a second marriage, so Chabrol slyly brews the upshot which they don't deserve, not afraid to take aback his viewers, but at the end of the day, it is a cheap trick for his own tunnel vision of the class schism, a pessimistic and distorted view of humanity and a fair game doesn't match the excellency of its cast..
Working with Isabelle Huppert came easy for Claude Chabrol, after all, they collaborated a lot in the films they did together.
Some of Ms. Huppert's best work can be seen in films directed by Chabrol.
This film starts with a quiet woman, Sophie, landing a house-keeping job with a rich bitch.