Anyone who has just finished taking his final exams can probably relate to the French concept of la cérémonie. Not entirely different from the hours of intense studying wasted in preparation for a killer final, la cérémonie describes the ritual that leads up to an execution. Claude Chabrol, France’s Alfred Hitchcock, tackles a portrait of unstable emotions in La Cérémonie. The film lays all the necessary groundwork for a shocking bloodbath ignited by two unstable women, but ends just when things start to get interesting.

Opting against many of the techniques that made Hitchcock’s films so frightening, Chabrol still manages to weave a disconcerting thriller. Such a movie seems unnatural without tricky camera shots, jarring music and surprises that leap from behind closed doors. The camera portrays everything objectively, as though its original intention was to film an uplifting story, and it caught this tale of murder entirely by accident. In the opening scene of La Cérémonie, Catherine Lelièvre (Jacqueline Bisset) interviews Sophie (a haunting Sandrine Bonnaire) for a position as a live-in maid in their immense country home. Sophie appears pretty and pleasant, yet there is something unnerving about her. Hired for the position, she begins to work in the Lelièvre home, where she quickly proves her worth as a good cook and efficient maid. However, she remains permanently rigid and uncomfortable around her employers, letting on that she might have something to hide. But what is her secret? Is her permanently glassy-eyed stare a sign of ignorance or is she brooding?

We are forced to grasp at straws for clues about what will happen. Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the movie is that Chabrol feels no obligation to build suspense or to differentiate the villains from the victims. Early in the movie, Sophie receives most of the camera’s attention, and we begin to sympathize with her about the cold treatment she receives from the Lelièvres. She does her work without question, yet she is forced to keep her distance from the family. She eats apart from them and retires to her room where she sits in front of the television when she is no longer needed.

The more we see of Sophie, the more suspicious we become. She goes to great lengths to hide her illiteracy from her employers, going as far as to walk into the nearest town to order her groceries because she is unable to read the grocery list over the phone. When the Lelièvre’s attractive young daughter discovers Sophie’s secret, Sophie retaliates with blackmail.

The seemingly innocent Sophie from the beginning of the movie has been replaced by the human equivalent of a land mine. What will it take to make her explode? Although safe by herself, Sophie becomes rebellious in the company of Jeanne (Isabelle Huppert), a spiteful postmistress who relates to Sophie while disliking the Lelièvres for her own reasons.

The way the two women behave in La Cérémonie reminds me of Rafael Zalinsky’s Fun, a movie about two teenage girls whose personalities match so closely that their actions become an unstoppable force that culminates in violence. Together, Sophie and Jeanne are just as dangerous and unpredictable a combination as the two teens in Fun. Jeanne’s hatred for the upper class and Sophie’s hazy violent past forecast a dismal fate for the Lelièvres.

The tension in the movie steadily accumulates with a carefully orchestrated snowball effect. It gathers momentum slowly at first, but eventually it becomes so powerful that it is sure to obliterate everything in its path. Perhaps what is most shocking about the movie is its casual acceptance of what eventually happens. Caught off-guard while watching Mozart’s Don Giovanni as a family, the Lelièvres have no way to anticipate the hell that will break loose in their own house.

For a reason beyond my explanation, Chabrol chooses to roll the credits just as the movie hits its most interesting plot twists, forcing us to strain around the words in order to see the outcome. Perhaps it is his way of saying that la cérémonie is over even though its aftermath promises to be infinitely more interesting than its exhausting forecast.