The Ceremony - 2003-10-06

The Ceremony - 2003-10-06 Director: Claude Chabrol Cast: Sandrine Bonnaire, Jacqueline Bisset France, 1996, Color, 112 minutes After four decades of filmmaking, Claude Chabrol proves with his forty-fifth film that he is still a master of this medium and has much to say and films to make. 'The Ceremony' is a drama about the secrets that people keep within themselves. The title 'The Ceremony' refers to the formal execution ceremony, and it is with this serious theme that the film gains social weight, yet in the hands of a genius filmmaker, it becomes a complex, political, cunning, and generally unpredictable film. The story begins on a winter morning in a Parisian café. Sophie is a young, self-assured woman who is hired as a housekeeper by a bourgeois family. The house in question is a remote one, equipped with neat and beautiful furnishings. After a while, Sophie feels secure and lets down her defensive posture, but at that moment, it becomes apparent that each family member is hiding a secret within themselves. Ultimately, the film leads to a climactic final scene following a series of sequences (which cannot be referenced without revealing the film's ending) and with the music of Don Giovanni. The performances are all excellent, especially Jacqueline Bisset, who plays the self-satisfied character of the hostess remarkably well. The New York Times wrote about this film that it is 'masterfully directed by Claude Chabrol, turning it into a classic example of a tense film.'