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Diary of a Chambermaid - Criterion CollectionRating:
Release Date: 05 June, 2001 Retail Price: $29.95 OUR Price: $26.99 You SAVE: $2.96! Cast: Complete Cast (5 total) |
Diary of a Chambermaid - Criterion Collection Reviews
Bu�uel's "different" film
This Review is for the Criterion Collection DVD edition of the film.
This film, released in France under the title of Le Journal d'une femme de chambre, is based on the book of the same name by Octave Mirbeau. The film is a different release for the director, Luis Bu�uel, who mostly did suurrealist films. While this film has a few surreal qualities to it, his other films have many more.
The story is about a woman who works for a family as a maid in a rural area of France. The family is somewhat odd, and their neighbors are big troublemakers. When her employer's daughter is found in the woods raped and murdered, she suspects the neighbors. The film then follows her efforts to prove her suspicions.
The Criterion release has numerous special features including a theatrical trailer. There are also is a video interview with screenwriter of the film, Jean-Claude Carri�re, who was also Bu�uel's colleague. There is also a transcript of an interview with Bu�uel conducted in the late 1970's
This release is a good one for Bu�uel fans.
Not Bunuel's best.
The Diary of a Chambermaid (Luis Bunuel, 1964)
When one sees that a film is directed by Luis Bunuel, normally a savagely funny satirist of bourgeois sensibilities, and based on a novel by Octave Mirbeau, that most boring of fin-de-siecle decadents, one goes into the resulting movie with a few preconceptions. Diary of a Chambermaid, while an interesting little movie, will fulfill none of them.
The gorgeous Jeanne Moreau (almost eighty years of age as I write this, and still going strong) stars as Celestine, the titular character, who goes to work in the sticks for a decidedly strange family. The beginning starts out in an amusing enough Upstairs/Downstairs mode, with Celestine trying to find her place in the ranks of both the house's owners and the hired help. It's relatively obvious that every male in the household is sniffing after her skirts-- the foot-fetishist grandfather, the oversexed man of the house, the brutish gardener (shades of Lady Chatterley's Lover can't have been coincidental, given how fresh its obscenity trial must have been in the minds of Bunuel and fellow screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere). Even the neighbor seems to have his eye on her. Things take a drastic turn when a local child is murdered (there's no mystery here, though; we are shown who the murderer is just before the deed occurs). Celestine is sure she knows the murderer's identity, and takes it upon herself to come up with the evidence necessary to send him to jail.
What will stay with the viewer long after the film is over is the backdrop, more than anything-- the rising tide of French fascism so starkly depicted in the movie. Other than that, there's not much to it that isn't somewhat predictable; Bunuel is a great filmmaker, to be sure, but this one is one of his weaker efforts. He coaxes decent performances out of just about everyone in the film, but none of them really reach the heights he obtained in The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, for example; it's decently paced, but drags in spots. The one aspect of the film which can't be criticized (however minor those critcisms may be) is the camerawork; whoever scouted the locations did a fine, fine job.
An interesting movie, but not as good as Bunuel can be. ***
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