La Ceremonie [VHS]

La Ceremonie [VHS]
by Claude Chabrol

La Ceremonie [VHS]

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Actor: Isabelle Huppert, Jacqueline Bisset, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Sandrine Bonnaire, Virginie Ledoyen
Director: Claude Chabrol
Cinematographer: Bernard Zitzermann
Writer: Claude Chabrol
Producer: Christoph Holch
Producer: Ira von Gienanth
Producer: Marin Karmitz
Writer: Caroline Eliacheff
Writer: Ruth Rendell
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Subtitled); French (Original Language), Analog
Format: Color, NTSC, Subtitled
Running Time: 112 minutes
Release Date: 2000-05-16
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Publisher: New Yorker Video
Studio: New Yorker Video

VHS Movie Reviews of La Ceremonie [VHS]

Movie Review: Class Struggle as Tragedy
Summary: 5 Stars

Claude Chabrol's "La Ceremonie" is based on the infamous Pepin murders of 1933. In 1933,a pair of (possibly) incestuous maids killed the family they served. In "La Ceremonie",Sandrine Bonnaire is the passive maid while Isabelle Huppert is the gossipy,darkly charming postmistress Jeanne. The maid can neither read nor write; she falls easily under Huppert's sway. In the meantime, she is working for a family (with Jacqueline Bisset as the luminous matriarch) that tries to be friendly to her,but ends up patronizing and condescending. Huppert is resentful, feeding off of Bonnaire's quiet resentment.

"La Ceremonie" portrays the so-called "class struggle" as a tragedy. Neither side is on the side of the angels. There is mutually assured destruction. Huppert's hatred of the rich upper-class destroys not only the family, but her as well. Bisset's family is casually condescending- while they aren't avatars of goodness,their brutal deaths are undeserved.

A dark moment in the film is when Huppert and Bonnaire casually reveal to each other that they might've killed members of their own families. Instead of mutual grief, they giggle and playfully tickle each other. Their bond is not one of love, but hatred and violence.

The conclusion of "La Ceremonie" fits the title;it's ritualistic. As Don Giovanni plays, killers and victims alike meet their ends. It chills the bones and breaks the heart.

Movie Review: Asolutely the finest
Summary: 5 Stars

I can find no finer actresses to listen to or look at than Sandrine Bonnaire and Isabel Huppert. With both in the same film- Heaven!

Movie Review: Disturbing and worth seeing
Summary: 4 Stars

An excellent portrayal of two very different personalities. Hupert's character is a chilling portrayal of someone with Borderline Personality Disorder. The maid is passive-aggressive. One need not speak psychobabble to understand why the two women are attracted to one another.

Hupert's character is at her most horrifying when she describes her baby's death not so much to reveal herself to her new "friend" but to righteously justify why it happened; the death of a baby who must have been terrorized into silence by her disturbed and self-centered mother. Haunting.

Movie Review: Good Movie but Knock off the Comparisons with Hitchcock
Summary: 4 Stars

I enjoyed "La Ceremonie" and I wasn't particularly bothered that I had purchased the movie thinking it was something it wasn't. The problem for me was the several references of Chabrol (in reviews of his movies) as the "Gallic [French] Hitchcock". Alfred Hitchcock was the master of suspense and knew how to allure his audience into an uncomfortable state of tension. His methods were often subtle, often brilliant, and usually very effective. What I realized early on in "La Ceremonie" was the absence of real suspense. Indeed, whatever suspense there was lay in wondering when the suspense would begin. I finally gave up on that aspect 3/4's of the way through the movie (if not sooner). I settled back, instead, to enjoy the director's brilliant work at developing his characters. When something finally "hit the fan", it was over quickly and, even with a mild twist at the very end, was more of a dissapointment than anything else.

I ordered several movies by Chabrol and this is the first of them that I watched. I'm tossing out the Hitchcock comparisons and looking to see the work of Chabrol instead. He's not Hitchcock but when that name is removed from the discussion, he turns out to be a pretty good Chabrol.

Movie Review: A French thriller with a wicked sense of humor.
Summary: 4 Stars

Often credited with starting the nouvelle vague French film movement, Claude Chabrol (1930) also collaborated with French New Wave director ?ric Rohmer to write a study of Alfred Hitchcock (1957). In fact, Chabrol has been called "the French Hitchcock" for directing such thrillers as Le Boucher. Adapted from Ruth Rendell's novel, A Judgement in Stone, Chabrol jokingly called La C?r?monie "the last Marxist film." Set in Brittany, the film tells the story of a strange housekeeper, Sophie (Sandrine Bonnaire), who has been employed by rich art dealer, Catherine Lelievres (Jacqueline Bisset) and her husband Georges (Jean-Pierre Cassel). The Lelievres live in an elegant country house with their daughter Melinda (Virginie Ledoyen) and son Gilles (Valentin Merlet). Because Sophie is illiterate, she can't retrieve a file, read a shopping list, take a drivers license exam, or count money. She spends her free time watching TV. When the town's postal clerk, Jeanne (Isabelle Huppert), befriends Sophie, the film shifts into a suspenseful tale of murder. Georges hates Jeanne (who has a reputation of killing her retarded child), and she resents the Lelievres mainly for the authority they represent. Huppert and Bonnaire carry the film with their loony roles, making La C?r?monie a thriller with a wicked sense of humor.

G. Merritt

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Summary of La Ceremonie [VHS]

In the 1960s and early '70s, Claude Chabrol was celebrated as the Gallic Hitchcock for his crisp, character-rich thrillers. La C?r?monie, 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

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