La Cérémonie (1995)

Thursday, March 21, 2019 @ 7:00 PM
Globe Cinema - 617 8th Ave SW, Calgary, AB
$12 General | $10 Members/Seniors/Students | $40 5-Pack Punch Pass | $99 Season Pass

DIRECTED BY CLAUDE CHABROL | FRANCE/GERMANY | 112 MIN.

Isabelle Huppert enjoyed a superbly rich ongoing collaboration with bon vivant director Claude Chabrol that lasted well into the 21st century. Chabrol, incredibly prolific, was a towering scion of the French film aristocracy. His debut feature Le beau Serge is popularly considered to be the inaugurating film of the French New Wave. Inspired by the Hollywood films of Alfred Hitchcock and Fritz Lang, Chabrol is known primarily for wildly inventive and playfully sinister thrillers, often revolving around skeletons in the closets of the bourgeoisie. His is a mischievous cinema that sets out both to excoriate and titillate. La cérémonie was, is, and shall ever be a standout. Like Jean Genet’s theatrical masterpiece The Maids (1947), it is inspired by the story of the infamous sisters Christine and Léa Papin, who in 1933 brutally murdered their employer and her daughter in Le Mans, France. Sandrine Bonnaire and Isabelle Huppert do not play sisters, but rather, respectively, a young woman working as a maid for a wealthy family in Brittany and the psychotic weirdo she befriends who works at the post office. Huppert, naturally, has a gas with the part. Be forewarned: it all leads up to one of the most chilling dénouements in all of cinema.

- Written by Jason Wierzba

SPOTLIGHT: ISABELLE HUPPERT

First appearing on screen in 1971, Isabelle Huppert has amassed more than 130 credits over the course of a remarkable and varied career. Indeed, she is considered by many to be the finest screen actress of her generation, having worked with many of the greatest directors of the postwar era. Whether in her famous extended collaborations with Claude Chabrol and Michael Haneke or in one-off partnerships with a who’s who of contemporary notables, Huppert is famous for her icy intelligence, intensity of affect, and subtlety of craft. Though her consistency is beyond dispute, it would be neglectful in the extreme to pigeonhole this fearless actress; while she can indeed be ruthless and inscrutable as she famously is in films such as Haneke’s The Piano Teacher, she is equally at home conducting amorous combat in Maurice Pialat’s Loulou or participating in the merry madcap antics of Serge Bozon’s Tip Top. Huppert, who has won and/or been nominated for innumerable awards, remains in a class of her own.

About Calgary Cinematheque

We are a non-profit film society dedicated to presenting significant, challenging, and essential works of cinema art in Calgary. During our season, which runs from October to April, we screen films weekly, in curated programs which situate each film in a thematic and historical context. We do this because we believe cinema is an essential form of artistic, social, and political expression. Audiences should be able to engage with a wide range of cinematic expression, not only with what is commercially viable. We believe in the power of sharing these experiences with other people in a theatrical setting and we strive to cultivate a community around that experience.  

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