Murderous Maids

The Papin sisters, two French servants convicted of brutally killing their employer and her daughter in Le Mans in 1933, are the subject of writer-director Jean-Pierre Denis's beautifully crafted, coolly unsettling film (the case also inspired Claude Chabrol's 1995 La Ceremonie, which moved the story into the present and posited socioeconomic causes for the crime). Shot on location, with wonderful attention to period detail, Murderous Maids argues that the older sibling's obsessive concern for her younger sister--spurred by a physically and emotionally abusive family history--fueled the violence, and while the Papins' background and the nature of their relationship are treated too elliptically to make this view entirely persuasive (and Denis's pacing is sometimes overly deliberate), the film has many compensatory virtues, not the least of which is Jean-Marc Fabre's elegantly understated cinematography, which emphasizes dark greens, blues, and browns. The acting, moreover, is excellent, especially by newcomer Sylvie Testud, who conveys older sister Christine's tortured inner life and bursts of rage with admirable economy and restraint. Creating a mood of quiet desperation that proves quite intoxicating, if not fully satisfying, this is recommended, overall. [Note: DVD extras include subtitled interview featurettes with costar Sylvie Testud (10 min.) and director Jean-Pierre Denis (9 min.), the original French trailer, the U.S. trailer, and a trailer for Christopher Miles' 1974 feature film, The Maids. Bottom line: a small extras package for a small but solid film.] (F. Swietek)