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Criterion Spine #1199 · Episode 12
La cérémonie
Claude Chabrol, 1995 · with Girish Shambu
"It’s an incredibly rich film."
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A wealthy Breton family hires Sophie, a mysterious housekeeper who conceals a secret. She forms an unlikely friendship with the local postmistress Jeanne — volatile, illiterate, and deeply resentful of the bourgeoisie. Based on Ruth Rendell's A Judgement in Stone, Chabrol's film is a tightly coiled thriller about class, humiliation, and the violence that simmers beneath domestic surfaces. Sandrine Bonnaire and Isabelle Huppert deliver two of French cinema's great performances in a film that never lets you settle.
A film critic and scholar whose writing engages deeply with world cinema, Girish Shambu brings particular expertise to French film and Chabrol's ongoing examination of the bourgeoisie — their rituals, their pretensions, and their blind spots.
Spoiler-free context and starting points.