La Cérémonie (1995)

9 TO 5, the ‘Uitkijk’ series for May and June, is all about rolling up your sleeves: work, whether fair or not, whether clean or not…

LA CÉREMONIE follows the quiet and efficient Sophie Bonhomme, who works as a maid for the wealthy gallery owner Catherine Lelievre. Although the family appreciates her work, Sophie is hiding a big secret: she is illiterate. She is determined to keep this fact hidden at all costs. When she befriends the scheming post office worker Jeanne, who turns her against her employers, the tension mounts. How far would she go to keep the family in the dark forever?

LA CÉREMONIE is heavily based on the crime novel “A Judgement in Stone” by the British author Ruth Rendell and, according to Chabrol, is a Marxist film about class struggle. For their performances, Isabelle Huppert and Sandrine Bonnaire won a shared Coupe Volvi at the Venice Film Festival.