Les blessures assassines

I found out this movie from one review of La Cérémonie. I think the difference between these two is this one is crimes of passions and the other is psychopathic killing.

Christine was apparently madly depressed and also having anxiety disorders. She basically shut herself off from the outside world. Her childhood traumas very much caused her adult mental stages. By reading the facts, she suffered paranoid schizophrenia most likely starting at that period of time. I would wonder whether the director followed the psychological researches of this case or not. The incestuous lesbian relationship explained the cause well since the social class uprising warfare had little bearings of it.

It is a well scripted and logically unfolding. All the leading roles were crafted convincingly. This is not a movie for entertaining but you would hardly forget.

Film is based on the infamous Papin case which rocked France in 1933. In the town of Le Mans, Monsieur Lancelin, a retired solicitor, lived with his wife and daughter. Seven years earlier, the family had hired two sisters as maids, the elder Christine and younger Lea. Madame Lancelin was strict and would wear white gloves to check for dust and there was surprisingly little personal interaction between the family and maids. One afternoon Monsieur Lancelein came home to pick up his wife and daughter for a dinner engagement and found the door bolted. After awhile police got in through a back window. They found the bodies of Madame Lancelin and her daughter; heads bludgeoned beyond recognition and legs carved like pieces of French bread. Weapons were a pewter jug, hammer and knife. Unique to this case, was the fact that their eyes had been gouged out while they were alive. The maids were found upstairs and confessed. The younger had twice blown out the house fuse and feared reprisal from the mistress of the house. The maids attacked them both when they arrived home; the younger following what the older did. The case became a cause celebre in France as an example of the cultural chasm between employer and servant. The case was also made into a play The Maids by Genet and another film - Sister My Sister. Interesting that all psychiatric testimony about the pair (incest and an extremely dysfunctional background and family) was dismissed by the small town jury but later resulted in such evidence being admitted into French trials.

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I watched this movie a lot of times and all that can I say this is so powerful and fierce even though it is based on a true story. Sylvie Testud's performance in this movie is absolutely amazing! Even her sex scenes with Julie-Marie Parmentier are all emotional, and I can't see any traces of incestuous sex in it, making it as my most favorite love scene ever! The murder scene, on the other hand, looks like scary to me in a slightly manner. I also salute to the director of this film for having an excellent and amazing film.

Let us be very clear from the beginning, the person who came up with Murderous Maids could not have seen or understood the film. The Injured Assassins, or Injured Killers (assassins just sounds better to me) is much more evocative of the feel and content of the story. For this is not the story of a murder, but the story of two sisters who happen into murder.

First, Sylvie Testud is superb, restrained yet full of emotion, humble but full of pride, cold but full of love.

Many people have commented on the class warfare. The Jean Genet play takes that to an extreme. Some have been pulled in by the story of incest and illicit love between sisters. Denis walks deftly across these problems and presents a story that unfolds itself authentically and truly.

The mother in this movie did give me problems, she seems nicer than her effect on the girls, but remember who it is that puts them in the convent, and how she hides the secret of the oldest sister's pain using it only as a weapon to inflict damage upon Christine (Testud).

As the film came to the climax I briefly thought of Chabrol's Le Ceremonie, but that is another story, another film. Though depressing and slow, but not a second too long, this is a seriously important film for those who value the intensity with which cinema can bring the truth to light.

Sorry, but historical accuracy, t & a and good sub-titles aren't enough. As a true-crime fan, I was intregued by this film's attempt to re-construct the lives of these two women as a way of trying to understand their crimes, but the heavy-handedness of the director combined with the sweaty, gross-out sexuality between the two sisters kind of spoiled it for me (There's a sex-scene combining incest, hairy armpits and crepes that I found utterly appalling). The "bad" characters were too overly bad, the "crazy" ones were overly crazy; by presenting this polarized view of life, the director robbed the film of exactly the ambiguity that made these crimes so shocking and difficult to understand. I do, however, give high marks to the scenes of the crimes themselves--which were effectivly shocking--and to the character of the maid's mother who was a multi-dimensional, interesting and surprising character.