Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.
Continuing my current armchair romance with Isabelle Huppert, I turned my attention tonight to Claude Chabrol's tense, atmospheric thriller, Cérémonie (1995). I don't mean to slight Sandrine Bonnaire, who is charming in her own way and the lead in this particular film, but she's more scary than appealing in Cérémonie while Huppert is at least scary and appealing. Besides, at my age, one woman at a time is one more than I can handle! The pair of them shared the Best Actress award at the Venice Film Festival for their performances here. Claude Chabrol must have been doing something right to rate the services of not only Huppert and Bonnaire for this film, but Jacqueline Bisset and a young Virginie Ledoyen as well.
Historical Background: Claude Chabrol has directed almost fifty films in his long career that began about the time that the French New Wave thundered along the shoreline of cinema. Two of his early successes, Les Cousins (1959), and Les Bonnes Femmes (1960), were an integral part of the New Wave phenomenon. Chabrol's work has oscillated between periods of brilliance and times when he felt compelled to crank out some rather mediocre films designed for commercial success. His second golden period occurred from 1968 to 1972, when he made such acclaimed movies as Bad Girls (1968), La Femme Infidèle (1969), Le Boucher (1969), and This Man Must Die (1969). He had a rare isolated success with Story of Women (1988), but his next strong period came in the mid-1990’s with such films as L’Enfer (1994) and, the one under review here, La Cérémonie (1995). La Cérémonie compares well with the very best of Chabrol's films. Like so much of his work, this film is characterized by suspense and deals with criminal behavior and psychological obsessions.
The Story: Sophie Bonhomme (Sandrine Bonnaire), a humorless young woman looking for a job, keeps an appointment for an interview at a coffee shop with Catherine Lelievre (Jacqueline Bisset), who is in need of a new housekeeper/maid. Sophie makes a good impression on the sophisticated Catherine, who is an art dealer and married to a successful older man, Georges Lelievre. Catherine collects Sophie's reference from her former employer, but is sufficiently impressed to extend a tentative offer immediately. It is Sunday and Sophie will begin on Tuesday. They'll meet at the train station at 9:00 A.M.
Georges and Catherine live in a country village, about six miles out of the city, with their son, Gilles (Valentin Merlet) and Georges' daughter by a previous marriage, Melinda (Virginie Ledoyen). She is a college student and he in early adolescence. The family lives in a large country home that is tastefully furnished. They own the latest in television and stereo equipment and have enough space in their home for a separate library. They appear to live a lifestyle that I would term upper middle class. This is a loving family. The husband and wife still tenderly smooch, father and daughter sometimes go hunting together, and mother and son watch television together. All of the lines of communication are open. The family enjoys nothing more than sitting together and watching a telecast of Don Giovanni on their big screen television, hitched up to the stereo. The only noticeable imperfection in the parenting skills of the Lelievres is that Catherine is hypocritical about smoking cigarettes herself while forbidding her son to do so.
As Sophie assumes her new duties, Catherine treats her respectfully, explaining hurriedly but concisely what is expected. Melinda, who comes home from college now and then, feels somewhat awkward about the class disparity inherent in the family having a maid, and makes an effort to express interest and concern for Sophie. Georges is a little more brusque and demanding, but he also offers to help Sophie when they discover that she apparently needs eye glasses and hasn't yet learned to drive. All in all, the Lelievres are a rather pleasant family to work for other than the disparities of class, opportunities, and comforts that are inherent in the relationship.
As we observe Sophie going about her duties, we begin to understand that there is an impediment of which the Lelievres are unaware. Sophie is apparently dyslexic and unable to read or write. She is unable even to make out single words on a shopping list or count coins. Sophie, however, is apparently so ashamed of her condition that she is determined that no one know about it. When she is left a list of groceries to call into the store for delivery to the house, she has to have a friend call it in instead. When she is left a note with some instructions, she drops it on the floor so that Melinda will pick it up and read it for her. On one occasion, Georges calls home to ask Sophie to locate a file folder with a particular title on it because a messenger will be by to pick it up. Sophie hangs up as though they had been cut off and then ignores Georges' callback and, later, the messenger. Except for these isolated problems, Sophie does a marvelous job keeping the house neat and clean and her cooking pleases the entire family.
During her free time, Sophie makes the acquaintance of another young woman of the village, Jeanne (Isabelle Huppert), who is a postal clerk at the small post office of this village. In contrast to Sophie who doesn't read at all, Jeanne reads a bit too well, apparently opening packages and letters and reading or inspecting the contents before resealing and delivering them. She has an ongoing feud with Georges and rather resents the entire Lelievres family. Jeanne had been a single mother, at one time, but lost her daughter shortly before the little girl turned four in a bizarre accident. Jeanne had apparently accidentally kicked the child in the dark and the little girl had landed up against the wood stove and suffered a severe burn injury, from which she died. Jeanne had even been jailed and tried for murdering her baby, but the case had been dismissed for lack of evidence. Jeanne had been reinstated in her job with the post office but had been transferred to her current post to avoid being tormented by gossip. Georges, however, had recognized her from her picture in the newspaper, which might explain Jeanne's resentment toward him. Sophie overhears Georges and Catherine talking about Jeanne's "secret" but Jeanne, in the meantime, has discovered a "secret" from Sophie's past. Sophie's father had died in an apartment building fire that was deemed to be arson. Though Sophie had been a suspect, there was insufficient evidence as to who might have started the fire. After revealing that they know each other's secret, Sophie and Jeanne get into a tickling match on the bed and giggle together like a couple of teenagers.
Jeanne's bitterness toward the Lilievres begins to rub off on Sophie because Jeanne puts the worst possible spin on every little slight that Sophie experiences in her work for the family. Sophie also puts a new spin on one of Jeanne's strategies, when she listens in on a telephone call from Melinda to her boyfriend, Jeremie (Julien Rochefort), during which Melinda tells Jeremie that her period is ten days late and that she may be pregnant. Melinda accidentally discovers that Sophie is illiterate when she tries on her glasses and notices that they are not prescription glasses. Melinda generously offers to help Sophie learn to read and mentions a television show she had watched about a doctor who has helped people overcome dyslexia, but Sophie angrily responds that if Melinda tells anyone, she'll tell Melinda's parents that she is pregnant. Melinda runs off to her room.
That event turns out to precipitate the final unraveling of Sophie's working relationship with the Lelievre family and one crisis leads to another. I won't add more, so that readers can discover for themselves the bizarre ending and its equally surprising coda.
Themes: Chabrol never tired of satirizing the French bourgeoisie but, in La Cérémonie, his slaps at the Lilievres family are gentle and more than offset by an obvious sympathy for these characters. They love one another and are well meaning in their dealings with Sophie, even if their efforts sometimes come off as patronizing. Georges comments, for example, when Sophie's illiteracy is revealed, that he didn't know such things still existed. Georges is a bit stuffy and condescending toward Sophie, but the rest of the family tries to reach out to her and show interest in her needs. Chabrol also criticizes the quality of the "charity" of the middle class (using some of the peripheral characters of the film), by showing that some of their donations to the church collections for the poor consist of threadbare old clothing or broken toys.
Class disparities create an inherent inequality, however, regardless of how decent the relationships might otherwise be. When one person waits on others or cleans up for others, they are bound to experience a sense of inferiority, diminished self-worth, and envy. Speaking personally, I don't believe that I could ever be comfortable either having a servant or being one. I recognize, however, that my personal view on the matter may not necessarily be in the best interest, overall, of the lower class. There are a certain number of people who have, for one reason or another, developed very little in the way of employment skills. If the wealthy had no maids, butlers, housekeepers, and the like, it is far from certain that the individuals employed in such capacities would find better, alternative employment. Sophie's inability to read seems to have been the reason that she has had to settle for work as a domestic. She is so ashamed of her disability that she prefers to hide it than to accept offers of help by which she might overcome her limitation to an extent. One can only speculate as to what her childhood was like and why she was unable to receive help at that point.
Most films that take up the issue of class disparities have a left-leaning perspective, generating sympathy for the lower class by revealing situations in which competent lower class people are held back by exploitive circumstances and/or lack of opportunity. The rightwing view typically attributes class disparities to differences in skills and abilities. Although Chabrol characterized his film as "a Marxist film about class struggle," it seems to me that it supports the view from the right better than that from the left. One has the feeling that Sophie was not capable of anything materially better than her job as a domestic for the Lelievre family and that if such jobs didn't exist, she would be out of luck altogether. For that matter, Jeanne's competence seems questionable as well. One can believe that her child may have died by accident, but only a very careless mother could have unknowingly kicked her four year-old child into a wood stove and then not recognized the situation before the child had been burned to death. Then, if she is truly opening people's mail, she also has attitude and ethical problems as well. I feel that I have as much disdain for class disparities as most anyone else, when they are based on exploitation or lack of opportunity, but there's only so much a society can do to save people from their own personal inadequacies. In my opinion, the message of this film in relation to class issues is ambiguous at best.
The most interesting themes in this film, from my vantage point, are those relating to the psychology of the two young women, Sophie and Jeanne. Some reviewers suggest lesbian undercurrents in their relationship. Certainly there is some genuine female bonding between the pair but since there is no hint of a sexual component, I don't see that the term "lesbian" applies. These are two young women who are both starved for affection that find friendship and support from one another. Unfortunately, their relationship has the clinical characteristics of a so-called folie a deux. One gets the distinct feeling that neither Jeanne nor Sophie alone would have gone so far off the deep end, but, together, they egged each other on.
Production Values: The script for this film, based on a mystery novel called A Judgment in Stone by Ruth Bendell, is effective in several respects. First, the dialog is intelligent and believable. In drafting the screenplay, Chabrol worked with a co-writer, Caroline Eliacheff, who was a psychoanalyst (as well as the wife of the film's producer), in order to strengthen the psychological underpinnings for the story, beyond what was inherent in the novel. The psychology of the two lower class women, Sophie and Jeanne, became the most intriguing part of the film. Secondly, Chabrol drew on his own experience with suspense films to pace the film's various revelations perfectly and to maintain a relentless progression of tension. Viewers experience a vague sense that something bad is going to happen in this film without ever knowing exactly what that will be until in transpires. The Bendell novel that served as the basis for this film was also the source material for the Canadian film, The Housekeeper (1986)(marketed as A Judgment in Stone in the U.S.).
Chabrol's main influences, as a director, were Alfred Hitchcock and Fritz Lang, but they were two quite different kinds of masters from whom to learn. Lang used mainly an objective camera technique while Hitchcock was famous for his subjective camera. Chabrol integrates both approaches. Watch the opening sequence, for example, and you'll see Sophie approach the coffee shop as though it were an objective camera shot. Only after she enters the restaurant do we realize that we've been watching her approach from approximately Catherine's vantage point at her table.
Sandrine Bonnaire's performance as Sophie is exquisite. She masks a simmering hostility behind an icy demeanor. She makes her character both fascinating and scary. You may have seen Bonnaire in such films as A Nos Amours (1984), Police (1984), Vagabond (1985) or Monsieur Hire (1989). Isabelle Huppert's rendition of Jeanne is a tour de force. I'm a little puzzled why I find her so attractive considering that most of the roles that I've seen her perform are very scary kinds of women. She appeared in Going Places (1974), Every Man for Himself (1980), Heaven's Gate (1980), Coup de Torchon (1981), Entre Nous (1983), Story of Women (1988), Amateur (1994), and 8 Women (2001). All of the four actors playing the Lelievre family members provided strong supporting performances. Virginie Ledoyen, who played Melinda, is otherwise best known for her appearances in The Beach (2000) and 8 Women (2001). Jacqueline Bisset is well-known to American audiences for appearances in such films as Two for the Road (1967), Bullitt (1968), Airport (1970), Day for Night (1973), and Murder on the Orient Express (1974). Jean-Pierre Cassel's resume includes The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), The Three Musketeers (1973), The Four Musketeers (1974), and Murder on the Orient Express (1974). The youngster, Valentin Merlet, has since appeared in The Dreamers (2003).
Bottom-Line: This is a very entertaining thriller from a master of the genre. You won't be disappointed. The digital transfer is excellent for the Home Entertainment DVD. There's a twenty minute documentary about the making of the film that features Chabrol, Huppert, and Bonnaire. Other special features include the trailer and a director filmography. There's an essay by Jonathan Rosenbaum in the companion booklet. La Cérémonie is in French with optional English subtitles and has a running time of 102 minutes.
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