In a summer that’s going to be filled with blockbuster spectacle, if you’re in the mood for something a little more literary, you’ll have some options. And one of them will come in the form of "Diary Of A Chambermaid," the latest effort from Benoît Jacquot ("3 Hearts," "Farewell My Queen").
Based on the novel by Octave Mirbeau novel, and previously brought to the big screen by Jean Renoir and Luis Buñuel, this version stars Léa Seydoux and Vincent Lindon in the story of a Parisian chambermaid who is pushed to the professional and personal limit when she’s sent to the provinces on a new assignment. Here’s the official synopsis:
READ MORE: Berlin Review: Benoit Jacquot’s ‘Diary Of A Chambermaid’ Starring Lea Seydoux
Léa Sedoux follows in the footsteps of Paulette Goddard and Jeanne Moreau as Célestine, a resentful young Parisian chambermaid who finds herself exiled to a position in the provinces where she immediately chafes against the noxious iron rules and pettiness of her high-handed bourgeois mistress (Clotilde Mollet), must rebuff the groping advances of Monsieur (Hervé Pierre), and reckon with her fascination with the earthy, brooding gardener Joseph (Vincent Lindon). Backtracking past the fetishism of Buñuel’s version to Octave Mirbeau’s original 1900 novel, Benoît Jacquot has one eye on contemporary France: the sense of social stiflement, Célestine’s humiliating submission to Madame’s onerous terms of employment, Joseph’s virulent anti-Semitism. But the turn-of-the-century setting saw the rise of Freud’s ideas about the human unconscious and so Jacquot takes care to look past the characters’ outward behavior and appearance to the repression and compulsions that lie behind.
"Diary Of A Chambermaid" opens on June 10th.
This movie is not sensitive to our times rape-culture and the legal human-flesh marked of prostitution and abuse of children, girls, boys etc. In the above trailer, at 38sec into it, the scene with the Chambermaid is being sexual \’attached\’, but she says,NO, and gets away, but when she turns toward the camera, she smiles, like she enjoyed it. This tells us, that girls that say NO, really want\’s it, so just do it to them. Movies like this legislates our ongoing rape-culture and fuels the prostitution marked. What\’s on a silver-screen gets into the train-of-thought in the mainstream, and sends us all into a train crash in our common reality. This is not a theory, its proven science. Have a look at that scene 38sec into the trailer, and think. How do you view this?
Trond, While there\’s enough evidence in the real world to legitimatize your concerns about rape culture, to judge a film you haven\’t seen based on a few seconds of footage is perhaps premature. Especially since trailers are notorious for editing clips together for maximum dramatic hype with sometimes no correspondence to the actual context. I took from her smile not that she enjoyed it in the sense that you described, but rather that she now knows she has power over her master and is prepared to exploit it. Which unfortunately has historically been the source of power women have been most able to wield.
Hm, but that is my point… They know, they promote it in the trailer…why? Because we\’re in the rape-culture. Its the trailer thats tells us the intent, the selling point. Reality is not the 180 degrees to movies, they feed on etch other. Its human behavior. The "unfortunately"-thing, is that its in the "now", not in ancient history… Prostitution is not the oldest trade, its the oldest solid ongoing proof of abuse, trafficking… only tech evolves, not the human basic needs. If a human get food, sex, entertaining, alcohol etc., over "just enough", its always ends in abuse… There is no "accident", its no,"Oh, I didn\’t know…"…We live in the time of googling. If you don\’t know, you have taken the choice of not knowing. I know human behavior, been a keen observer of it decades… Stupidity is a choice, not "stupid" at all…or you\’re in an eyes-wide-shoot "happening"… Storytelling is "a closed silent mind, that are screaming loader then a Munch from thè wall", so I hear ya… 😉 …Hollywood is a better, and way more accurate news reporter then the CNN or any journalist or political, social talking-face with a science degree can muster up live on a News-Show on TV…and we know it, don\’t we, really? 😉
Showing something is not necessarily the same as promoting it. Perhaps this film is actually an acute exploration and indictment of the things of which you speak? Always best to actually watch a film before judging it based on a few minutes of footage.