Journal d’une Femme de Chambre (2015)

Journal d’une Femme de Chambre is the third film adaptation of the book by Octave Mirabeau. Previous adaptations were by Jean Renoir in 1946 and in 1964 Luis Bunel. Now its director Benoît Jacquot’s turn. With Léa Seydoux (La vie d’Adèle) in the leading role he has an actress who has the qualities to convincingly play the character of Celestine, a maid who works for the upper class.

We get to know Celestine when she starts working for a couple in the countryside. At the beginning of the twentieth century the role of the maid is submissive and in this case the lady of the house pays constant attention to her, letting her know immediately if she does something wrong. Celestine is always quick to respond viciously, even though she keeps it to herself. In this world, she has learned how to maintain her position and she has to deal with the advances of the man of the house. In various flashbacks, which sometimes are hard to decipher when they have taken place, we can see what she has went through. It is obvious that the lives of women who were doing housekeeping was a tough life in which often things were expected sexually, whether they wanted it or not.

Jacquot succeeds in bringing the period to life. The costumes look nice, the locations are well-chosen and I don’t have much to criticise when it comes to the acting. But looking at the movie as a whole it unfortunately fails. Several scenes have little coherence, some choices of Celestine at the end are not well-formed (feelings for a man suggested with a few moments). The result is a movie which doesn’t pull you in and doesn’t spend enough time giving enough depth to its interesting subject matter. As I haven’t seen the other two versions of this it’s hard to say how this compares, but to me it was very disappointing.