Be afraid. Be very afraid. There may be psycho bitches in your town - perhaps at your local post office, perhaps in your home. Maybe they are sneaking up behind you as you read this, about to blow your head off as you finish reading this sentence. It should go without saying that they have no respect for private property or social norms, resent people who are successful, think life owes them plenty, have sapphic leanings, and are poorly educated.
I suppose that’s how I could describe Claude Chabrol’s La Ceremonie (1995) if I didn’t want to take it seriously. But I do want to take it seriously. It’s thoughtful, interesting and superbly made. So why is my response to it a string of hackneyed jokes focusing on its disturbed villains? Because it’s one of the most unsettling movies I’ve seen, and if I concentrate on it I might have nightmares. It is a true thriller. It is wound as tight as a Hitchcock film. And it has the painful inevitability and universal menace of The Omen.
Chabrol has described it as the last Marxist movie. I can see what he’s getting at. One of the underlying themes of this film is something not often discussed in our society - how real and enduring the rifts between social classes are, and how people in different social strata often see the worst in each other without stopping to second-guess the stereotypes they rely on. People from different classes might think they understand those different from them, but often they don’t. And even if they sincerely wanted to understand each other they often lack the vaguest clue about how to go about doing that. They adopt the well-meaning responses of their class, not realizing that these behaviors are inherently those of their own class. As to how this tension fits into the film, the lead characters all perform a number of slights upon others that they themselves don’t think anything of. But the interpretations of these slights by those of another class can leave dark, festering wounds, and gradually this builds up and sets in motion a horrific conclusion. That the objects of this fury are as kind and appealing as any screen characters you are likely to see makes it that much harder to watch. But their fate is what their fate is – they are wrapped up in a history and structure broader than themselves, one they are not aware of and cannot be saved from.
While everything from Chabrol’s direction to the prominent use of Mozart deserves mention, I want to save special praise for the acting. Sandrine Bonnaire and the four actors who play the Lelievre family (including the ever lovely Jacqueline Bisset) are all very good. Isabelle Huppert is so good that I’m having trouble thinking of a word to describe her performance. She really is one of the best actors working today and it’s a shame more Americans are not familiar with her work.
I doubt I will watch this movie again for a long time. It's that dark. But as thrillers go, this is probably one of the best of the last decade.
Posted by armand at August 19, 2004 01:34 PM | TrackBack | Posted to Movies