Cool-headed, steady-handed piece of filmmaking, from Claude Chabrol. The narrative is efficiently gotten off the mark ("Let me explain the situation ...") in a pre-credits scene in which the ladylike Jacqueline Bisset, well at home in the French language, interviews the rather strange-seeming (and always fascinating) Sandrine Bonnaire for the vacant position of maid in an isolated country house in Brittany. Nothing arises for the longest time, however, to identify the film as a thriller apart from Chabrol's reputation and that of Ruth Rendell, the prolific and prodigious author of the adapted novel, A Judgment in Stone. A definite problem soon comes to our attention, though to no one else's: the new maid cannot read. And a tolerable amount of suspense is generated through her efforts to conceal this and to overcome the inevitable difficulties: a things-to-do note left by Madame, a shopping list to phone in to the grocer. And general tensions begin to mount over the festering resentment, the perhaps irremediable resentment, of the Have-Nots for the Haves: for their big house, their fine wine, their Mozart on the stereo, their fancy car, their everything. Eventually, although a little late in the day, the dark past yields up some questions of a more pointedly thrillerish drift. And there's a violent finale that feels rather forced, then rather fortuitous. A final "surprise twist," as the closing credits start to roll, nails down the thriller credentials. But it all seems a bit sudden and a bit abrupt. The film was better off when its credentials were more in doubt. The film, and the central character, and the spectator. With Isabelle Huppert, Jean-Pierre Cassel. (1996) — Duncan Shepherd
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