A newly hired maid for a rich countryside family befriends a post-office clerk who encourages her to rebel against her employers.A newly hired maid for a rich countryside family befriends a post-office clerk who encourages her to rebel against her employers.A newly hired maid for a rich countryside family befriends a post-office clerk who encourages her to rebel against her employers.
- Awards
- 9 wins & 11 nominations
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThe author Ruth Rendell has said that Claude Chabrol's version of her novel "A Judgement in Stone" is one of the few film adaptations of her work that she is happy with.
- Quotes
Georges Lelievre: [referring, respectively, to Sophie the illiterate maid and Jeanne the nosy postal clerk] What a pair: one can't read at all, and the other reads our mail.
- ConnectionsFeatured in Close Up: Isabelle Huppert: Message personnel (2020)
- SoundtracksCello Symphony
Composed by Benjamin Britten
Featured review
Contrived Thriller
A rich French family hires a mousy maid who has some peculiar traits. It starts out as a nice character study, with Bonnaire creating a sympathetic figure as a young woman who struggles with her illiteracy but is too ashamed to to let anyone know about it. In the last act, however, the film goes south, turning into a silly thriller. The ending is particularly contrived and ridiculous. Bonnaire is quite good as the maid, as is Bisset (speaking in French) as her kindly employer. In fact the whole cast is fine. Chabrol is regarded as the French Hitchcock, but he lacks the master's skill for building suspense with wit and subtlety.
helpful•1815
- kenjha
- Mar 21, 2011
Details
Box office
- Gross US & Canada
- $873,196
- Gross worldwide
- $873,196
- Runtime1 hour 51 minutes
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.66 : 1
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