La Cérémonie [A Judgement in Stone] **** (1995, Isabelle Huppert, Sandrine Bonnaire, Jacqueline Bisset, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Virginie Ledoyen) – Classic Movie Review 4,192

Claude Chabrol turns Ruth Rendell’s thriller novel A Judgement in Stone into one of his best movies, the 1995 crime drama film La Cérémonie. Isabelle Huppert won the 1996 César Award for Best Actress, one of her record 16 nominations. 

Claude Chabrol, dubbed by some the French Alfred Hitchcock, turns Ruth Rendell’s 1977 psychological thriller novel A Judgement in Stone into one of his best movies, the 1995 crime drama film La Cérémonie. Isabelle Huppert won the 1996 César Award for Best Actress, one of her record 16 nominations so far up to 2023, making her the most nominated actress in the history of César Awards. She won again in 2017 for her role in Elle (2016).

The admirable Isabelle Huppert and Sandrine Bonnaire chill the soul as the tormented local postmistress Jeanne (la postière) and the illiterate French housekeeper Sophie (la bonne), whose friendship propels the film suspensefully to its inevitable bloody climax.

Jacqueline Bisset also impresses, speaking in French as the wealthy family’s mother, the upper-class owner of a gallery, Catherine Lelievre, with Jean-Pierre Cassel as Georges Lelievre and Virginie Ledoyen as Melinda. The masterly, on-form Chabrol keeps a vice-like grip on pace, mood and plot.

Rendell’s book is one of her best. The story is similar to the real-life case of French maids Christine and Lea Papin, who murdered their employer’s wife and daughter in 1933, as well as to Jean Genet’s 1947 play The Maids. The novel was previously filmed as The Housekeeper (1986) with Rita Tushingham as the illiterate maid, the Sandrine Bonnaire role. Rendell said Chabrol’s version was one of the few film adaptations of her work she is happy with.

The cast are Isabelle Huppert, Sandrine Bonnaire, Jacqueline Bisset, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Virginie Ledoyen, Valentin Merlet, and Serge Rousseau.

Isabelle Huppert is one of only four women to have won Best Actress award twice at the Cannes Film Festival: in 1978 for Chabrol’s Violette Nozière (tied with Jill Clayburgh) and in 2001 for Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher.

She is also one of only four women to have received the Volpi Cup for Best Actress award twice at the Venice Film Festival: in 1988 for Chabrol’s Une affaire de femmes [Story of Women] (tied with Shirley MacLaine), and in 1995 for La Cérémonie (tied with her co-star Sandrine Bonnaire).

Huppert also starred in Chabrol’s successful Madame Bovary (1991).

Claude Chabrol (24 June 1930 – 12 September 2010).

Ruth Rendell, Baroness Rendell of Babergh, CBE (née Grasemann; 17 February 1930 – 2 May 2015).

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 4,192

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