La Ceremonie written by Claude Chabrol, Caroline Eliacheff, based on the novel by Ruth Rendell, directed by the former was nominated for important prizes, and won in Venice, The Volpi Cup for Sandrine Bonnaire and Isabelle Huppert, the latter has also won the Cesar, which is the French Oscar, the motion picture is also on The New York Times Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made list…you find thousands of notes on films from this and other lists on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html

 

La Ceremonie written by Claude Chabrol, Caroline Eliacheff, based on the novel by Ruth Rendell, directed by the former was nominated for important prizes, and won in Venice, The Volpi Cup for Sandrine Bonnaire and Isabelle Huppert, the latter has also won the Cesar, which is the French Oscar, the motion picture is also on The New York Times Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made list…you find thousands of notes on films from this and other lists on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html

 

8 out of 10

 

I have been elated by Judgement in Stone https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2026/07/a-judgement-in-stone-by-ruth-rendell-is.html the novel by Ruth Rendell on which La Ceremonie is based, perhaps I have been too exuberant, exhilarated, for the motion picture was not so enchanting this time, when I saw it first, it was mesmerizing

 

It is tempting to use the line from The History of The World as rendered by Mel Brooks, wherein Caesar aka Dom DeLuise is brought some scintillating treasure, now I think about it, I think it was in a real bathtub, though they did not have such a thing back then, this movie is irreverent, brings in present amenities and uses them in Ancient Rome

Anyway, Caesar looks at this formidable display of rubies, gold, precious stones and says ‘nice, not thrilling, but nice’, in a bored way, which brings me to Flow   https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/flow-by-mihaly-csikszentmihalyi.html a life changing classic of psychology

 

One has to be between boredom and burnout, La Ceremonie is an excellent feature, except I wonder what displeased me: there is some sense of incongruity, maybe something along the lines of ‘I do not believe it’, it could be that I am getting to used with the story, seeing that I have just finished A Judgement in Stone?

The book was fantastic, but even then, I remember seeing the illiteracy of the main character – her name has been changed for the film, she is Sophie aka Sandrine Bonnaire now – as an outré aspect, but the emphasis which was placed on it, appeared exaggerated to me, not that I see the oeuvre as anything less than 10 out of 10

 

The Paradox of Choice https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/the-paradox-of-choice-by-barry-schwartz_30.html is another psychology classic by Barry Schwartz, and one main theme I remember is the fact that there are two types of humans, Maximizers and Satisfizers, the first category is never happy, and we want to be in the second

The other main objection I have had for both the film and the novel referrers to the two main characters, Sophie and Jeanne in the movie, both names have been changed, they do not seem credible, or at least, if we find one such ‘piece of work’, then it is impossible to have two of this kind in the same country, never mind a small village

 

That is me being ‘normal’, or maybe just average, or even mediocre, as some would say, and then let us look at America say, and the MAGA, plus those who voted for the Orange Nero, how about them? The chances of getting two lunatics so close to each other increase. I will also mention Tal Ben Shahar https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/choose-life-you-want-by-tal-ben-shahar.html who talks about psychopaths