elvircorhodzic DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID is a crime comedy, which on a surreal way connects a radical politics, corruption, violence, and sexual perversions. Mr. Buñuel is not making fun of some kind of tradition, he just points to the shocking background of a provincial town.Célestine is an ambitious and attractive maid, from Paris, who comes to work for a Normandy estate. Her hosts are crazed, violent and perverse. The elderly father is a harmless old fetishist, his daughter is a frigid and meticulous woman, while her husband can't keep his hands off the servants. Here are their servants and a neighbor, retired Army officer, who shares his bed with a chubby maid. Célestine must wisely choose men who surround her...The story is placed in the middle of the 1930s. A woman has completely disrupted relations and instincts between other protagonists in this film. It's kind of a surreal view on a provincial environment and the relation between a nationalism, petty bourgeois and religion.Mr. Buñuel has put a strange household in the correlation with the French social structure. Characterization is very good. Completely different characters fight, in a surreal atmosphere, to achieve their ambitions. However, the epilogue is more than realistic.Jeanne Moreau as Célestine is a smart and very capable woman. She pushes her temperament in the right direction. She has become an essential part in the lives of people and hostile environment that surrounds her. She waited patiently for the right opportunity to remove a "rotten tissue" and realize her ambition. Ms. Moreau offered very good performance.This is, perhaps a little unclear story, but it is an effective and fun experience.

JasparLamarCrabb Luis Buñuel's stunning film stars Jeanne Moreau & Georges Géret in a clever battle of wills. Moreau is the new chambermaid of an estate lorded over by a kinky aristocrat (with a shoe fetish) and his remarkably uptight (and very materialistic) daughter, played to the hilt by Françoise Lugagne. The daughter's husband (Michel Piccoli) is a wannabe Casanova who's impregnated some of the past help. Added to the mix is political radical Géret, who may or may not be a child killer. Buñuel really peels back a rotten onion here, with the sexy and free-spirited Moreau slowly realizing that she's in a madhouse. The director has seldom been so straightforward in his indictments. Here he takes aim at the bourgeoisie, the French government, and of course religion (one of the townspeople is quick to finger a couple of monks as murder suspects). It's a scathing film but also filled with many comic touches: Moreau's show of boredom at her at employer's fetish; the constant battle between Piccoli and blustery neighbor Daniel Ivernel; Lugagne's hen pecking nagging of Moreau NOT to break anything. It's superbly acted by all, with Moreau giving what is really an Oscar worthy performance. In addition to the great work by Laugagne, Géret is perfect as the radical/bully and Piccoli adds a lot playing against type as a real nitwit. The film's co-writer Jean-Claude Carrière plays a befuddled priest.

writers_reign There may be those who would describe this as Rules Of The Game Lite dealing as it does with the mores of French society in the 1930s but one crucial difference is that Renoir made his film AT THE TIME whereas Bunuel was working a quarter of a century later. It's never really explained - unless, of course, I missed an explanation - why an intelligent, sophisticated Parisienne Celestine (Jeanne Moreau) would choose to bury herself in the French countryside in a menial position. Whatever the reason the fact that she does so gives Bunuel the chance to take his customary jaundiced view of the bourgeois household that serves as a microcosm for France as a whole and the world at large. The household is like a fruitcakes convention boasting a frigid wife, a priapic husband a fetishist grandfather and a brutal predator/murderer gamekeeper/handyman. Symbols abound not least the snails suckling on the bare legs of the murdered child, followed closely by the garbage thrown consistently into the grounds of the house by a retired army officer and academics and pseuds could get hours of mileage out of that one given the Petain/Vichy government waiting in the wings to dish up garbage by the plateful to a humbled nation. Moreau, as is to be expected, turns in a fine performance as do all the principals but I doubt if even the most devoted Bunuel buffs would want to return to it again and again.

José Luis Rivera Mendoza (jluis1984) Luis Buñuel, the man considered Spain's finest filmmaker and revered master of surrealism by both critics and film historians, made a surprising change of style in the first of the series of masterpiece she did in France during his last years. Taking out his usual surrealist set-pieces, he adapts Octave Mirbeau's revered novel about social classes in a very straight-forward fashion. However, this does not mean the movie is bad as many may believe; quite the opposite, "Le Journal d'eune Femme de Chambre" is a perfect showcase of Buñuel's finest film-making style, ambiguous and stylish, like the master's own vision of life.The plot follows Celestine (Jeanne Moreau), an urban young woman moving to country in 30s France to work as a chambermaid for the Monteils, a rich family with a few dark secrets. As soon as she arrives, problems start as she tries to adapt to her new life with the bizarre Monteils. Between the constant advances of sexually insatiable Monsieur Monteil (Michel Piccoli), the always vigilant eye of his materialist wife (Françoise Lugagne) and the shoe fetish of old Monsieur Rabour (Jean Ozenne); Celestine makes her way through this collection of living portraits of the most bizarre human nature.With a plot like this it would easy to believe this is a movie where the high class is demonized and the poor sanctified, but this is not the case here. Buñuel makes sure to have an ambiguity in every character, even in Celestine herself. There is no black and white, just different shades of gray, in a way similar to the beautiful black & white photography he uses here.The photography is essential in this film; not only for aesthetic purposes, it represents the dark decadent days of 30s Europe, and the pessimism latent in both rich and poor people. As I wrote above, the shades of gray match perfectly the ambiguity of a group of characters with as many virtues as flaws. Buñuel and his cast manage to create believable and realistic characters.Jeanne Moreau gives a brilliant performance as Celestine. As the beautiful young city woman highly intelligent and not without aspirations, her character has enough room to let her shine, and she really makes the most of it. Equally brilliant is Georges Géret as Joseph, the tough gardener with fascist ideals that has a secret agenda. The rest of the cast is also very good and together with the witty script complete a superb character-driven movie.Buñuel's masterful direction creates a film that, while completely focused on the characters, is still filled with his usual symbolism. The edition and the camera-work are superb and way the camera seems to flow inside the house gives the film a voyeuristic feeling. No wonder why Buñuel consider it a very erotic film.While many people consider this movie as one of his "lesser works", I consider it to be quite underrated, as it proved that Buñuel was a master not only of surrealism, but of film-making in general. 9/10