Diary of a Chambermaid

Jean-Claude Carriere first collaborated with Luis Bunuel on 1964's Diary of a Chambermaid, a slyly subversive film that has echoes of other movies about the idiocy of the idle rich, such as Rules of the Game, or Bunuel's earlier film, The Exterminating Angel. With this film, though, he has made his protagonist someone who, while not being rich, thinks like a rich person, and is able to use them at her discretion.

Jeanne Moreau stars as Celestine, who has just arrived at a country manor. She is from Paris, and everyone who meets tells her this is obvious, I guess from the clothes and perfume she wears. In fact her employer, Francoise Lugagne, tells her to tone down both her wardrobe and her smell.

The madame of the house runs things. She has a semi-senile father, who delights in calling Celestine Marie (he calls all his chambermaids that), going over his dirty postcard collection and having Moreau dress up in boots. The master of the house is Michel Piccoli, who does nothing but hunt and impregnate the female servants. It seems the mistress does not have relations, because it hurts her. She is all right with her husband's infidelity, but every time he gets one pregnant it costs her money.

Next door lives a blustery military man who feuds with Piccoli, throwing his garbage onto his yard. He openly keeps sexual company with his maid, but soon comes to enjoy the company of Moreau. So does a coarse and scathingly anti-Semitic servant (Georges Geret). The film takes place sometime between the wars, and it's political tinge makes the film sting even more.

When Geret murders and rapes a young girl, Moreau is determined to leave, but decides to stay, both attracted and repulsed by the man. He will not sleep with her unless she promises to marry him, and we are led to believe she does so so she can expose his crime to the police.

This film is drolly funny, as well as being a kind of horrifying look at the kind of people who, with any justice, would be machine-gunned to death. There is a terrific scene in which Lugagne tells the priest (played by Carriere) that she does not sleep with her husband, but performs other acts (I presume she's talking about handjobs, as it is fairly inconceivable she would suck cock). When the priest asks her how often she does this, she says two or three times a week, which shocks and mortifies the priest.

Eventually Moreau marries the military man, and perched in her bed she barks out orders, suggesting that the old maxim about why the poor don't resent the rich more than they do is because they believe with a little luck they can be rich.