La Ceremonie
France, 1995; in French with English subtitles
"Well, you will certain reconsider hiring help after this movie!" And with that, Linda and I plunged ahead to see La Ceremonie, director Claude Chabrol's 55th movie. The opening couldn't be more ordinary--Catherine Lelievre (Jacqueline Bisset) interviews Sophie (Sandrine Bonaire) at a cafe. She needs a domestic worker at her remote home in Bretagne for her blended family--her rich husband and their children from previous marriages.
Fate pairs Sophie with Jeanne (Isabelle Huppert), a wacked-out postal clerk (this stereotype extends beyond America), who has it in for the bourgeois family. They routinely receive their mail opened, mutilated, or not at all. The stage for unsettling us is set early, when Catherine picks up Sophie at the train and Jeanne asks for a ride. She shows an intense interest in Sophie, and the feeling that *something* is going to happen is palpable.
Without giving too much away, the secret Sophie hides is certainly part of her problem, and it is rather unnerving when it is revealed to us. That she has not remedied the problem is what seems truly disturbing. But she has bigger problems. Both she and Jeanne have had close relatives perish in suspicious circumstances, and this only bonds them further.
The family goes about its business, with worries about what to have for dinner, and other petit bourgeois concerns; the university student/daughter, Melinda, feels free to treat Sophie like a person; but Sophie grows to dislike this family, with Jeanne fanning the flames for a personal Marxist revolt. The family is used to having domestic help around, regardless of how the domestics feel about them. In a capitalist western nation like France, it is understood that when you are hired as a maid, democracy disappears, but you are free to leave employment. However, this freedom can disappear when you need housing and food. Is Catherine truly guilty of class insensitivity? The two are clearly unbalanced, but is there an underlying truth to their outrage? La Ceremonie is a nice comparison to *Breakdown*; the former pits intimate strangers against each other and grudges are overblown; the latter shows strangers deliberately victimizing people at random, and the grudge is just a rouse.
Sandrine Bonnaire has never looked more drab, but it suits the tabula rassa she becomes for Jeanne's vengefulness. Isabelle Huppert, often likened to an "ice princess"; because of her portrayals throughout her career (Madame Bovary, Sincerely Charlotte), really opens up as the unhinged, postal clerk. A very nice surprise is Jacqueline Bisset, who is elevated to a whole new level when she speaks French throughout a movie. Most people remember her for such unilluminating performances as Rob Lowe's mother and his classmates lover in Class.
Based on Ruth Rendell's novel *A Judgement in Stone*.
Copyright 1997 Seth J. Bookey, New York, NY 10021
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