Cheap La Ceremonie (Video) (Isabelle Huppert, Sandrine Bonnaire, Jacqueline Bisset) (Claude Chabrol) Price

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Customer Reviews of La Ceremonie

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.

Life is so unfair.
Two intelligent but mean-minded and resentful young women, who have been made that way by a lifetime of emotional deprivation, meet in this small village where Sophie (Sandrine Bonnaire) has come to apply for a job as a housekeeper to a prosperous middle-class family. They are both alone in the world, and to each other they display a genuine warmth and affection that is terribly at odds with their attitude towards everyone else. And it doesn't help that the family that Sophie goes to work for has everything; both material wealth and a happy, contented family life. The contrast between their lot and Sophie's couldn't be greater. And the fact that they are such close-knit happy family makes the denouement so much more painful to watch. They reach out to sophie and try to make her feel as much at home and part of the family as possible. But she can't stop feeling envious, nor get over her sense of injustice; why should they have so much when she has nothing? And her sense of injustice is aggravated by a secret shame; she cannot read or write.

In the beginning the family are well pleased with her work; she is conscientious and hard working. But this is eventually undermined by the bad influence of her friend Jeanne (Isabelle Huppert), and the fact that she keeps disappearing to meet Jeanne - who the husband hates because, at the post office where she works, she keeps opening his mail.
And then she begins smuggling Jeanne into the house to watch television, something which, when he finds out, angers the husband. But the final straw comes when she tries to blackmail the daughter into not telling her parents about her inability to read or write. This leads to her instant dismissal which enrages Jeanne. They want vengeance, but what they eventually do seems a spur of the moment thing.

You feel deeply sad about what happens to this charming family and almost as sad about what happens to Sophie and Jeanne. The overriding feeling at the end of the film is a sense of loss.

If the two girls had never met they would have continued to be bitter and resentful but it would have ended there. It was their coming together which enlarged and reinforced their feelings and gave them the confidence to act - with awful consequences for both themselves and the family. They were victims of a kind of mob-mentality.

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.