DVD La Ceremonie

Chabrol at his absolute best

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.

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.