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A Judgement in Stone

La cérémonie

1995

Claude Chabrol

Isabelle Huppert, Sandrine Bonnaire, Jacqueline Bisset, Jean-Pierre Cassel ...

7.3

3,792

Drama. Thriller Sophie, a quiet and shy maid working for the upper-class family Lelievre, hides her illiteracy under the cloak of a perfect household and obedience. She finds a friend in the energetic and uncompromising postmaster Jeanne, who encourages her to stand up against her bourgeois employers. Things start to escalate as the Lelievres find out that Sophie can't read and has brought Jeanne into their house against their wish.

	Author	Review
United Kingdom	Cath Clarke The Guardian	"France's master of suspense, Claude Chabrol, relishes every malevolent, icily controlled shot of this perfectly constructed thriller, right up to its terrifying, violent climax."	POS
United States	Roger Ebert rogerebert.com	"The actors include old hands who have worked with Chabrol before (...) and strike the right note: No one in this movie should act as if he knows how it ends. And no one does (…) Rating: ★★★ (out of 4)"	POS
United States	Janet Maslin The New York Times	"This story has a chilling, lethal inevitability from the very start. But the artistry of 'La Ceremonie' is in Mr. Chabrol's precise control of his material"	POS
United Kingdom	David Parkinson Empire	"Superbly acted and directed with a thriller master's finesse, it's a nasty delight (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS
United States	Variety	"From the first frames, Claude Chabrol establishes an expectant atmosphere, with ample payoff in the end (...) Performances are on-target across the board"	POS
United States	Jonathan Rosenbaum Chicago Reader	"The brilliance of Chabrol's movie rests precisely in this dialectical ambivalence: one feels throughout that he has nothing but affection for the Lelievres, yet he also understands deeply the murderous class hatred of Sophie and Jeanne"	POS
United States	Desson Thomson The Washington Post	"[It] builds towards a stunning, jarring conclusion that puts everything you have seen in a chilly new perspective (...) Bonnaire and Huppert are unnerving and fascinating to watch together."	POS
United Kingdom	Quentin Curtis The Independent	"For Chabrol, this is a return to the form of his heyday (...) His imagery is subtly unsettling"	POS

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