La Cérémonie

Sophie Bonhomme takes a job as a maid for the wealthy Lelièvre family, keeping house at their villa to the satisfaction of her employers. Reserved and undemanding, she spends her little free time alone, and she hides from the family the fact that she cannot read or write. When the Lelièvres leave on holiday, Sophie befriends Jeanne, the local postmistress, a curious and outspoken woman who opens other people's letters. Each of the two women carries an unspoken secret, and their friendship turns into an alliance against the bourgeois household, setting the story on a course toward an inevitable confrontation. The film is based on the true case of the Papin sisters.

Claude Chabrol directed and wrote the screenplay with Caroline Eliacheff; it is the fifteenth of the seventeen films he directed in chronological order, following Torment and preceding The Flower of Evil. Sandrine Bonnaire plays Sophie and Isabelle Huppert plays Jeanne, with Jean-Pierre Cassel, Jacqueline Bisset, Virginie Ledoyen and Valentin Merlet in supporting roles. Marin Karmitz produced.

Made in France and Germany, the film took about 11 million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds 7.5/10 from 15,000 votes and on TMDB 7.3/10 from 416 votes, while a critics' rating stands at 8.1/10 from 33 reviews, placing it clearly above the audience scores.