La Ceremonie movie review & film summary (1995)

"Of course, murder always heightens the interest in a film," he told me in 1971, at the New York Film Festival. "Even a banal situation takes on importance when there's a murder involved. I suppose that's why I choose to work with murder so often. That's the area of human activity where the choices are most crucial and have the greatest consequences. On the other hand, I'm not at all interested in who-done-its. If you conceal a character's guilt, you imply that his guilt is the most important thing about him. I want the audience to know who the murderer is, so that we can consider his personality."

That leads to the question: Does he let us know who will commit murder(s) in "La Ceremonie?" I think he does, although there will be some in the audience who are surprised that anyone in the film is killed. Assuming that some must die (this is a film by Chabrol, after all), it is obvious who they must be. That's why I won't issue a spoiler warning: This isn't a who-done-it. It's more about how the two murderers do something together that neither would be capable of doing by themselves.

So "La Ceremonie" is about murder. It is also about faces, two in particular. They belong to Isabelle Huppert, as Jeanne, the rude postmistress in a small French town, and Sandrine Bonnaire, as Sophie, a young women who comes to the town seeking work as a maid. In these roles they share a facial quality both often display: They have an almost maddening secrecy. There is also a difference: Jeanne seems all-knowing, cocky, dominant. Sophie, submissive, grateful for attention, doesn't seem very bright. When she's told something, she has a way of turning her head slowly and letting it sink in before reacting. The film consistently plants hints of a secret Sophie conceals -- a handicap I will not reveal -- that indicates that her ability to hold a job indicates she has a gift for deception.

Huppert, the busiest major actress of her generation, wears so well in so many different roles because she only reluctantly reveals a character's feelings. She leaves it up to us to figure them out; there may be some play-acting involved, but we sense that most is hidden. Above all she's ideal for characters with an enormous stubborn determination that she holds very much inside. Chabrol has used her seven times, most inevitably in the title role of "Madame Bovary."

Bonnaire's face can be equally concealing, but she is better at seeming vulnerable. Her great early role was in Agnes Varda's "Vagabond" (1985), the story of a young office worker who walks away from her job and sets off optimistically to backpack around French. When he's found dead in a ditch some months later, we wonder why she continued to fall, and fall, when she had many opportunities to save herself. She will never tell us.

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