Philomena is based on the true story of a woman who had a baby out of wedlock and was essentially forced to give the child up for adoption. Many years later she goes looking for her son, and a journalist tags along. The movie stars Judi Dench and Steve Coogan. According to my review, it is a good film. Honestly, I remember very little about it, but I still have the Blu-ray so maybe I should revisit.
Two sisters, chambermaids for a wealthy French family, brutally murdered their employer, Mrs. Ancelin, and her daughter Geneviève, one February evening in 1933, in the small French town of Le Mans. This incident rocked French society for weeks.
Well, I say it rocked French society, but really, I have no idea if it had any effect whatsoever. It would be some 40 years after the murder that I would be born, and I’ve seen no information about its effect on France other than the publicity material associated with the film based upon the events, The Murderous Maids, and other reviews of said movie.
If it is true that this incident did rock French society at the time, and I’ll accept them as such, it is ponderous that it is so. Though certainly brutal, and laced with the peculiarity of having been committed by insane and incestuous sisters, it still seems strange that such an event would be anything more than curious to a culture whose history is laced with violence and brutality.
I wonder similar things when I watch the national news in America. Certain events, for whatever reason, capture the news and become so saturated that they permeate our whole culture. Millions of people have had to make the decision to “pull the plug” on a loved one, so why did Terry Schiavo’s case get national attention?
Countless murders are committed in this country every year, yet for months in 2004, the only one that mattered was that of Laci Peterson, at least if the news had anything to say about it.
It is an amazingly strange and unanswerable thing to me why some stories capture the attention of the media, and thus my nation, while so many others slip away into obscurity.
In the case of the murderous maids, Christine and Léa Papin, the media hype seems to surround the horror (Oh, the horror!) of two lower-class maids striking out against their upper-class masters. As if it might start another revolution.
The film is a slow-burning affair. It tries to get into the heads of these sisters and give us a glimpse into why two seemingly meek and mild maids could explode and commit such atrocities.
Honestly, I spent the first 20 minutes of the film, confused as to who was what, and what exactly was happening. The opening scene involves the sisters at a young age. Christine wants to become a nun, like her older sister but is forced into servitude by her mother. We fast forward several years without warning and see the older sister only once more, and that briefly. Maybe I was a bit sleepy, or maybe I was too busy trying to remember my rusty French to compare it to the subtitles but with the changes in time and the disappearance of characters I spent a good bit of the first half utterly confused.
Once the film settles into the lives of the two sisters it begins introducing moments that ultimately contribute to their murderous madness. Their mother is shown as greedy and selfish, taking Léa’s money and manipulating her through emotional blackmail. The masters of the homes are cruel and unforgiving.
The only kindness and semblance of love the two can find is from themselves. This love turns incestuous and further turns their situation into an “us” versus “them” scenario. Christine is clearly the leader of the two, while Léa is shy, quiet, and easily lead.
After numerous jobs, they finally land one where the two of them can serve. They seem happy at first, finding some praise from their strict master while at the same time, she puts on white gloves for perpetual inspection of their cleanliness.
It is when Léa burns out a fuse for the second time that things go haywire. Fearing severe scolding from their masters, they instead beat them to a bloody pulp.
In jail, Christine begins receiving visions, goes into holy fits, writes crosses on the walls with her tongue, and continuously wails out for her sister. Despite this, the incestuous relationship, the troubled family life, and the extreme violence of the crime fitted with lack of a clear motive, the French court decides to allow none of this in as evidence and their psychiatrists find both mentally stable.
Though its English title and even plot description reads as a B-movie exploitation flick, the film unravels in a slow, methodical method. The sex and violence are both graphically photographed, but in between such titillating moments, the scenes are tediously paced. It is all artfully made, professional to a tee, and really rather dull.
It makes no decisions as to why the sisters did what they did. There is no judgment placed upon the mother, upper-class society, or even the sisters. It is told in a documentary style, allowing events to unfold as they are without extemporaneous commentary. In fact, there is not one note of music played throughout the entire film. The viewer is left to decide how to feel, and what to think.
Murderous Maids is a character study of two historical women who have captured the consciousness of French society. It is a fascinating story about how two seemingly downtrodden and simple women can be turned murderous. It’s too bad the film couldn’t have been more interesting itself
On August 15, 1998, a car bomb exploded in Omagh, Northern Ireland killing 29 people and injuring some 220 others. It was the single worst incident in Northern Ireland in over 30 years. In 2004 director Pete Travis filmed a movie about the atrocity and the subsequent investigation. It is a relentless, brutal film that never allows the viewer an emotional sigh of fresh air. What strikes me most about the film, now, is not the quality of the film, which is quite good actually, but that I had never before heard of this event.
Admittedly, I am not the most knowledgeable lad when it comes to current events. When I had a television I would catch one of the morning news shows, and maybe a few minutes of CNN or Fox News just before bed. While in the car I tune into NPR, I receive e-mails from the Washington Post, and generally spend a few moments checking the various news websites. I’m not obsessive about the news, I try to stay mildly informed, but I certainly don’t spend every waking moment turning my thoughts to the state of the world. Yet, here was a huge terrorist attack, followed by a scandalous investigation with a potential cover-up behind it, and I’ve never heard a word about it.
I am sure the news channels mentioned something about it shortly after the bombing. It was probably a short little blurb with a death count. It’s got all the elements they love: terrorists, explosions, murder, and scandal. But, it didn’t happen in America, and European drama doesn’t have the ratings pull as say something stateside, say Michael Jackson’s latest shenanigans. Especially when these events happened in some obscure country like Northern Ireland. Who knew the North of Ireland was a separate country anyway?
In the US we have cable networks that run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. There is CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, not to mention specialty networks like CourtTV, and of course, nonnews-specific networks that still employ daily news shows. Yet with all of these outlets, American audiences are still inundated with the same stories over and over again.
It is a big world, with a lot of important events happening, but instead of covering these events, they rehash the current scandal of the week and trial of the century. How did Bill Clinton’s hummer overshadow the murder of 29 people? How did Mark McGuire’s record-breaking homerun sprint become more important than terrorist activity? Certainly, the network news shows give us what we want. Had we received a 3-hour special report on the Omagh bombing I’m sure many of us would have clicked over to Seinfeld reruns. In the end, I’m not scholar enough, nor have the time, to lay out why virtually no one I know has heard of Omagh before. This is a movie review after all. Yet, as I think about the film I can’t help but feel the sting of guilt. When I hear the chattering other others complaining that Americans are full of ego, and don’t have the slightest idea about the world, I must hold my head low and sigh.
The film itself is shot like a documentary, Dogme95 style. It uses handheld cameras, utilizes only natural lighting and there is nary a digital effect to be seen. For 106 minutes it never lets go of its punishing, merciless hold on your emotions. There is no comic relief, no juncture in which to catch your breath and get away from it all. The film brings you in close, lets you feel the tension, and suffocate in the terror. It doesn’t want you to enjoy what you see. This is not a film that allows the audience to distance themselves from the actions on the screen or their very lives. It is a film that cries out, carrying the voices of all humanity that suffers, and that feels injustice.
Though it takes a few moments to adjust to its visual style, the handheld camera work becomes an effective means to bring the audience right into the emotional impact of the film. It loses a little steam in the second half when the main character, Michael Gallagher (Gerard McSorley), a father of one of the victims, begins to lose his way in bringing the terrorist to justice. However, though some headway is lost, the film continues to pack a hard emotional punch.
I am glad that films like Omagh are being made. Though it is a film that will never see a theatre screen in America, it may find its way onto a shelf in the local movie rental house. It is here, that countless Americans may go looking for something a little different, something that they haven’t seen. And it is here that they might learn a little about the world around them.
themidnightcafe.org 