Sandrine Bonnaire plays an illiterate maid hired by Jacqueline Bisset to care for a luxurious country home, in this odd thriller from director Claude Chabrol (The Story Of Women). What starts out as a character study contrasting Bonnaire's isolated existence with that of the lively, prosperous family takes a strange turn when Bonnaire strikes up a friendship with an intrusive postal clerk (Isabelle Huppert). Each reveals that she knows a dark secret from the other's past, a revelation that leads not to estrangement but to a perverse bond. Chabrol's film is nothing if not intriguing, thanks largely to Bonnaire's stony detachment and Huppert's aggressively plucky insanity, but it essentially turns into a highbrow variation on The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, with a finale featuring Mozart's Don Giovanni instead of that film's Gilbert & Sullivan. Furthermore, while La Cérémonie has a psychological complexity (at least as far as its outcasts are concerned) and a careful style that makes it seem less sensationalistic than Cradle, it still feels sensationalistic, with Bisset's family so poorly developed that it seems like a group of mere targets. Bonnaire and Huppert's performances are compelling enough to make La Cérémonie worth watching, but they're ultimately better than the film deserves.
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