La Cérémonie (1995)
Directed by Claude Chabrol

Film Review

La Cérémonie is, in many ways, the perfect distillation of the work of French film director Claude Chabrol.  Not only does it concern itself with themes which preoccupied Chabrol for most of his career - primarily the disconnect between the bourgeoisie and the working classes - but it also bears his stylistic imprint most vividly.  When people talk about a Claude Chabrol film this is pretty well what they have in mind - a subtly chilling drama with undercurrents of sinister intrigue building to a horrific climax (albeit one with an overtone of dark humour).   La Cérémonie was the best film that Chabrol made since his golden period of the late 1960s, early 1970s, a return to the stylistic brilliance and narrative power of Que la bête meure (1969) and Le Boucher (1970).  Just when many reviewers had begun to write him off as a spent force in the early 1990s, Chabrol made an unexpected return to form with La Cérémonie, a film that revived national and international interest in his work and galvanised a late creative flourishing, which lasted up until his death in 2009.

A faithful adaptation of Ruth Rendell's acclaimed 1977 novel A Judgement In Stone, La Cérémonie evokes a true story, the celebrated case of the Papin sisters who violently murdered the couple who employed them as servants at their Le Mans home in 1933.  The film is the first instalment in a loose trilogy of films written (in collaboration with Caroline Eliacheff) and directed by Chabrol - the other two being Merci pour le chocolat (2000) and La Fleur du mal (2003).  In each of these films (which are stylistically and structurally very similar), a murder committed in the distant past is purged by a murder (or the intent of murder) in the present, a kind of delayed retribution.  This is a variation on the notion of transference of guilt which featured heavily in the films of Alfred Hitchcock, the director who perhaps had the greatest influence on Chabrol. 

La Cérémonie has arguably the strongest cast of any Claude Chabrol film and this has doubtless been a factor in its enduring popularity.  Not long after she won international acclaim for her portrayal of Joan of Arc in Jacques Rivette's Jeanne la Pucelle diptych, Sandrine Bonnaire inveigles her way into Chabrol's dark world with consummate ease and portrays the inscrutable Sophie with something of the schizoid nature that characterised Anthony Perkins's Norman Bates in Psycho (1960).  The seeming normality of Bonnaire's character when we first meet her is belied by the suggestion of something very unpleasant just beneath the surface, the hint that she is a fugitive from a nightmarish past that continues to haunt her.  Isabelle Huppert is the perfect counterpoint to Bonnaire, playing her free-spirited character as someone who is obviously dangerous and not afraid to show it.  This was the role that earned Huppert her first and (to date) only Best Actress César, although she has been nominated for the award so often that she probably has a special seat with her name on it at the Théâtre du Chatelet by now.  Jacqueline Bisset and Jean-Pierre Cassel were both, deservedly, nominated for Césars for their supporting roles, and Virginie Ledoyen showed great promise in one of her earliest film appearances (looking, appropriately, like a younger version of Huppert).

Claude Chabrol has described La Cérémonie as his most left-wing film, and certainly its political subtext is not too difficult to discern.   The film is a wry but incisive commentary on the inability of the bourgeois elite to engage with the concerns of the wider population.  They exist in a kind of bubble - self-sufficient, self-absorbed, practically unaware that there is even such a thing as a proletariat.  The image that comes most readily to mind is that of Marie Antoinette happily luxuriating in velvet-textured privilege on the eve of the French Revolution, blithely unaware of the events that would shortly bring her to the guillotine.  The clockwork inevitability of the French and Russian revolutions is reflected in the mechanical fate that befalls the Lelievre family in La Cérémonie.  It is not malice that propels the Lelievres to their doom.  Like the Romanovs and the French aristocracy, their only crime - and it is a crime -  is to remain indifferent to the lot of ordinary people, to fail to see the necessity to engage with the common man, even when he is bearing down on you with a loaded shotgun and a murderous glint in his eye.

One of the most striking things about Chabrol's portrayal of the bourgeoisie is how vulnerable they are, how willing they are to lie down and play dead when a crisis presents itself.  They are so sure of themselves, and yet all it takes to overthrow the brittle order of their world is an incursion by a solitary outsider.  La Cérémonie is perhaps the most extreme instance of this.  The Lelievres are a model bourgeois family, the most sympathetic we have so far seen in a Chabrol film, and there are no tangible signs of discord when they take an outsider (the maid Sophie) from the stinking lower orders into their midst.  But even from the outset, we can sense something is wrong.  The mutual tolerance is only a few nanometres in depth (if that).  Beneath the surface, feelings of resentment and paranoia swim like hungry piranhas waiting to strike one anther.  Sophie's frustration with her dyslexia fuels both her unease with her employers and their discomfort at being dependent on a slightly creepy stranger.   Despite the mutual distrust, despite the rigorously enforced class barrier, the uncomfortable symbiotic relationship that exists between employer and employee would have lasted had it not been for a third ingredient, the spark that lights the fire.

The anarchic postmistress who befriends Sophie (a likely graduate of St Trinian's) has no appreciation of class distinction, and this is what makes her so dangerous.  She is the catalyst that will unleash Sophie's revolutionary inner-self and completely decimate the Lelievres' delicately arranged world.  The apparent ease with which this is accomplished is perhaps the most unsettling aspect of the film.  Revolution isn't so much a matter of moral or physical superiority, as a case of knowing which piece of rotten timberwork to kick in order to bring the whole edifice down.  It is because the Lelievres are so cut off from the real world, so confident in their security, that they fail to see the danger that is heading their way.  What happens to them is more black comedy than tragedy, as they effectively end up stage-managing their own execution.  The real threat to the bourgeoisie comes not from pitchfork-waving peasants or psychotic housemaids but from their own complacency, from their unwillingness to see beyond their front doors and hear the army of malcontents heading in their direction.  Is La Cérémonie an echo of revolutions past or a warning of revolutions yet to come?

Film Synopsis

The Lelievres are a happy, comfortably rich family who live in a remote mansion near the Brittany coast.  Madame Lelievre is far too busy to take on all the domestic chores, so she hires a maid to do all this for her.  At first, Sophie seems to be the ideal housemaid.  She is good-natured, a meticulous cleaner and an excellent cook  - what more could her employers hope for?  But then Sophie's strange behaviour begins to worry Madame Lelievre.  To conceal her illiteracy, Sophie resorts to ever desperate measures, even pretending to be myopic.   What proves to be of greater concern is Sophie's friendship with the local postmistress, whom Monsieur Lelievre suspects of opening his personal mail.   When Sophie threatens the Lelievres' daughter to prevent her handicap from being revealed, she seals her own fate.  More precisely, she seals the fate of her employers and their two children...