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February 6, 2008
When nice people kill
The “Great Movies You Missed” series at the Stratford Library is ending on a high note Friday at noon with a free screening of the 1995 French thriller, “La Ceremonie,” which is an adaptation of “A Judgement in Stone,” one of the best novels by the British master of crime fiction Ruth Rendell.
Rendell often writes in the vein of the late Patricia Highsmith (creator of the Tom Ripley novels) who was more interested in analyzing how crimes happen than in solving mysteries.
“A Judgement in Stone” violates the whodunit formula in its very first paragraph: “Eunice Parchman killed the Coverdale family because she could not read or write. There was no real motive and no premeditation; no money was gained and no security. As a result of her crime, Eunice Parchman's disability was made known not to a mere family or a handful of villagers but to the whole country. She accomplished nothing by it but disaster for herself, and all along, somewhere in her strange mind, she knew she would accomplish nothing. And yet, although her companion and partner was mad, Eunice was not. She had the awful practical sanity of the atavistic ape disguised as twentieth-century woman.”
Rendell then flashes back to the hiring of Eunice to work as a maid in the Coverdale house; the rest of the book shows the series of chance meetings, small insults, and ignorance of “the big picture” that leads the Coverdale family inexorably to its doom. The result is a story that is much more frightening than the average thriller because we see the pieces of the puzzle being slowly put into place.
Chabrol has adapted Rendell several times; he shares her fascination with the psychology of crime and the way that victims sometimes step into traps that are partially of their own devising.
“La Ceremonie” slightly restructures the Rendell book, and moves it to the French countryside, but it has the same feeling of mounting tension as we see how a wealthy and aggressively "charming" family has no clue as to what is going on with their new maid.
The family has no knowledge of the destructiveness built into the lonely maid's new friendship with an angry postal clerk who loathes the well-heeled outsiders who have moved to her village for weekend fun.
The casting is superb, with the great Isabelle Huppert as the postal clerk, Sandrine Bonnaire as the passive maid, and Jacqueline Bisset as the well-meaning wife and mother who doesn’t have the time to worry about the personal life of her hired help.
“La Ceremonie” builds slowly but precisely to one of the most horrifying finales in modern suspense movie history.
It is wonderful that Stratford Library programmer Tom Holehan has unearthed this gem as the final offering in his annual weeklong film festival.
(The Stratford Library is at 2203 Main St. For more information on the Friday noon screening call 385-4164.)
Posted by Joe on February 6, 2008 5:35 PM
