Product Description

In La Cérémonie, Claude Chabrol, known as the "French Hitchcock," creates one of his most shocking and unforgettable thrillers. Catherine (Jacqueline Bisset - Day for Night, The Deep) hires the illiterate Sophie as her maid. But Sophie (Sandrine Bonnaire - Femme Fatale) soon falls under the influence of the mysterious Jeanne (Isabelle Huppert -The Piano Player, Merci Pour Le Chocolat), and the stage is set for a tale of murder, violence and betrayal. One of the Chabrol's most acclaimed films, and the winner of numerous international awards, La Cérémonie is a masterpiece of suspense.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #60707 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-07-27
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Color, DVD, Subtitled, NTSC
• Original language: French
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 112 minutes

Amazon.com
In the 1960s and early '70s, Claude Chabrol was celebrated as the Gallic Hitchcock for his crisp, character-rich thrillers. La Cérémonie, his 1997 hit adapted from Ruth Rendell's novel A Judgement in Stone, is a return to form, an assured domestic drama set in the upper-class household of the kind but condescending Lelievres family. Sandrine Bonnaire, excellent in an enigmatic, uncommunicative role, stars as their new, neurotically silent maid Sophie. She performs her duties efficiently and emotionlessly, staring out from behind an implacable, mask-like face born of loneliness and defensiveness. Isabelle Huppert is the town's gleefully misanthropic postmistress Jeanne, a gossipy, energetically insolent misfit who hates the Lelievres. When she becomes Sophie's best friend, her pathological game of taunts and gossip goes into overdrive with her sudden access to their house, and an already simmering class conflict boils over in unleashed anger. Chabrol charts the cascade of mischief and misunderstandings to its shattering conclusion, with a sensitivity to character and an eagle-eyed remove that makes the explosive climax all the more chilling. It's a devastating thriller, one of Chabrol's best, and a powerful portrait in hate and psychosis pushed over the edge in misunderstanding, manipulation, and mistrust. Jacqueline Bisset is the fumbling but sincere Mme. Lelievres, Jean-Pierre Cassel her complacent husband, and Virginie Ledoyen (A Single Girl) their sensitive young daughter. --Sean Axmaker

Customer Reviews

Chabrol's Career Crowning Masterpiece
In the sixties Chabrol was known as the French master of suspense or the French Hitchcock. With 1968' La Femme Infidele & 1969's Le Boucher he was at the peak of his form. he made a few good pictures in the early seventies like La Rupture and Wedding in Blood but his work of the latter half of the seventies and eighties(with one notable exception, Cry of the Owl) was uneven and sometimes just forgettable. Then in the nineties Chabrol made a steady comeback and made what is perhaps the best movie of his career and one of the best films by anyone in the nineties with La Ceremonie. The Hitchcock influence is still there but Chabrol has evolved it into something completely his own. La Ceremonie has a plot which could best be described perhaps as a mystery but there are so many well drawn characters that the film transcends the normal bounds of that genre. Its a first rate drama with three incredible leading actresses. Jaqueline Bisset has never been better or better looking than here as the ex-model and current society wife who hires a mysterious maid with a vacant stare and uncertain past. That maid is played by France's top actress Sandrine Bonnaire and her every move is captivating. Isabelle Huppert plays the pig tailed postal employee who befriends Bonnaire and the two create onscreen magic together. Chabrol's brand of mystery puts character over plot so though you have an intereting plot unfolding you are in no hurry to get there. The wealthy family that Bonnaire works for(Bisset, husband and two children) are each given at least one interesting dimension and subplot line of their own to make this one rich movie experience. A movie you will feast on more than once. Chabrol endings are highly original and you never see them coming so sit back and enjoy with full knowledge you are being entertained by a master.

You Can't Stop Watching
This is a terrifying little thriller about the psychopathy lurking in the most mundane places. Bonnaire is chillingly affectless as an illiterate housekeeper, and Huppert is equally unnerving as an unhinged postmistress. Separately, they wouldn't have done what they did; put together by a horrible accident of fate (or by a malevolent god) they perform a horrible act on a bourgeois family that seems inevitable from the first frame. Perhaps the most frightening aspect of the film is that the seemingly innocent family actually unwittingly provoke the atrocity inflicted on them because of the casual cruelty of the class divide between them and the two maniacs. The most famous, horrific scene in the film involves no visible bloodshed at all--it's when Huppert discovers a crucial terrible secret about Bonnaire, and instead of a normal shocked reaction, the two of them giggle like schoolgirls. This is based on Ruth Rendell's novel, "A Judgement in Stone" and while you can quibble about the casting (the two are middle-aged hags in the book, not two sexy, relatively young women as in the movie) it's still a surprisingly faithful adaptation.

Chabrol at his absolute best
Perfect casting contributes to the intense momentum that Chabrol develops in this archetypal tale (for Chabrol) of upper middle class rude luxe and working class desperation. Sandrine Bonnaire is the soft-spoken girl whom Jacqueline Bisset, the idly rich wife of a well-to-do industrialist, hires as the family's housekeeper. Bonnaire's character is hiding a secret from the family which is gradually revealed.

In the course of that revelation, Bonnaire befriends the town postmistress, brilliantly played by Isabelle Huppert, who is essentially incapable of rendering a bad performance in any work she appears in. Huppert's postmistress is the opposite in character to Bonnaire's wallflower. Brash, intense, and happy to flaunt authority, the postmistress encourages the housekeeper to express herself, to break out of her shell regardless of the secret she wishes no one to know about, to enjoy life even without the wealth that Bonnaire's employers have and that Huppert resents so vehemently.

As the housekeeper comes to trust the postmistress more and more, and, based on that, becomes more assertive, the postmistress tells her what she really wants. The psychological interplay between these two characters is done so superbly that the tremendously shocking ending is completely credible and all the more powerful for it.

The film's setting, a small rural French town, also contributes to its power, and is an equally superb choice that subtly underlines the contrast of the highly educated wealthy who retreat from the world, and the street smart working class who make the world what it is--in particular, foisting it when and where they can on their bitter rivals, the rich, for position in the world they know.

Based on a true set of events, La Ceremonie is a perfect convergence of Chabrol's continuing, near-obsessive focus on the corrupt wealthy who consistently degrade the have-nots, and the latter who deplore the former. A number of Chabrol's films have been released on DVD as of this writing (November 2003), but this has not, which is truly a shame.