Chabrol's plan was similar in "la ceremonie" to that of "la rupture" (1971).Take a detective story (Charlotte Armstrong for "la rupture"(the balloon man),Ruth Rendell for "la ceremonie"(A judgement in stone),then give it a "social satire" flavor.He did it all right in Armstrong's case which was a pure thriller.Rendell's case is much more different,since she is a much superior writer than her late American colleague."A judgement in stone" is a captiving novel,very subtile,with interesting characters.The social critic is implicit,but sitting on the fence;the bourgeois are sympathetic people,their daughter's proposal to teach the maid to read is sincere.But Rendell makes us feel the gap between this cosy intellectual life in which you enjoy operas and the illiterate world of the maid where books are enemies. A lot of the psychological side eludes C.Chabrol.First of all,Sandrine Bonnaire was not the character.She's much too beautiful.(A young Shelley Winters would have fit the bill quite well!)In the novel,the heroine was some kind of village idiot with empty eyes who was not realizing her social condition.The same goes for I.Huppert,much too attractive to play her crude friend.Jean-Pierre Cassel and Jacqueline Bisset,on the other hand, are credible bourgeois and make up a bit for the weakness of the casting. Chabrol's work is not bad,by a long shot.But,while explaining what should be implied,his wholesale massacre loses some of its strength.
Review of La Cérémonie
