Murderous Maids (2000)
Average Rating: 7.4/10
Reviews Counted: 53
Fresh: 48 | Rotten: 5
A historical account that is equally disturbing and engrossing, with a powerful performance by Sylvie Testud.
Average Rating: 7.8/10
Critic Reviews: 18
Fresh: 17 | Rotten: 1
A historical account that is equally disturbing and engrossing, with a powerful performance by Sylvie Testud.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.5/5
User Ratings: 555
Movie Info
Based on the same infamous murders that inspired Jean Genet's play The Maids, and the earlier film Sister My Sister, this French drama explores the difficult family life, professional pressures, and forbidden bond that in 1933 led sisters Christine and Lea Papin to murder the mother and daughter who employed them as maids. Based on Paulette Houdyer's novel L'affaire Papin, Les Blessures Assassines traces the childhood of Christine Papin (Sylvie Testud), a high-strung child who follows older
Cast
-
Sylvie Testud
Christine Papin -
Julie-Marie Parmenti...
Lea Papin -
Isabelle Renauld
Clemence -
Dominique Labourier
Mme. Lancelin -
Jean-Gabriel Nordman...
M. Lancelin -
François Levantal
Gassed Ex-soldier -
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All Critics (53) | Top Critics (18) | Fresh (48) | Rotten (5) | DVD (9)
Sylvie Testud gives such a ferociously controlled performance that the messy murder seems like a necessary release.
Unfortunately Denis' detached and indifferent camera never gets inside the story, its characters, or its milieu.
Julie-Marie Parmentier and Sylvie Testud are eerily convincing as the intense pair of co-dependents in the rigorous but creepy drama Murderous Maids.
Convincingly played, but some way short of revelatory.
Top CriticThough far from a feel-good affair, it is never cheap or cynical. Its creepiness is well-earned.
Testud is the burning center of a clinically dispassionate film.
Constructing this story with sensitive slowness, Denis keeps the sensational aspects surrounding these incestuous lesbian sisters in check, letting a fantastic performance from Testud carry the movie.
The film studies a world of deeply entrenched class divisions and sexual taboos, and then, with a scream in the night, draws the study to a close, leaving its meaning, like that of the case that inspired it, open to interpretation.
The acting is convincingly macabre, with Sylvie Testud giving an absolutely superb delirious performance.
Good performances and a firm directing hand make this worthwhile despite the distasteful subject matter.
Sylvie Testud is nothing less than ferocious...Even in her stillness, she's compelling.
Its unevenness can be forgiven due to the boldness of dealing with such a taboo topic matter ,and despite all of its problems, this film makes for a fascinating 90 minutes.
Newspaper stories or television coverage on murders far removed from the local scene accomplish as much, and are often as quickly forgotten
provocative but a bit flat
One wonders if they'll make similarly sympathetic films about O.J. Simpson in 70 years.
Spare but quietly effective retelling.
...salaciously simplistic.
Highly recommended as an engrossing story about a horrifying historical event and the elements which contributed to it.
Denis and co-writer Michele Petin's impeccable screenplay penetrates with a rawness that that is both unflinching and tantalizing. Lead provocatuers Testud and Parmentier give superlative performances
The dreamy, almost poetic nature is entrancing.
'The film is stark, straightforward and deadly... an unnatural calm that's occasionally shaken by...blasts of rage, and later, violent jealousy.'
Never inspires more than an interested detachment.
Audience Reviews for Murderous Maids
Super Reviewer
[color=#808080]"Murderous Maids" starts out with a flashback to a less than idyllic childhood as the Papin sisters are being sent to be raised in a convent.(Much is intimated about the disfunctional Papin family structure but very little is explicitly stated.) Emilia escapes the familial cycle by becoming a nun. Christine(Sylvie Testud) soon follows her mother into domestic service as a maid, even though she does have a problem with holding down a job for very long. Her little sister, Lea(Julie-Marie Parmentier), soon follows and joins Christine on a couple of jobs. Christine rebels against the notion of ever being married. She has always felt that she has had to look out for her younger sister but now the relationship becomes unhealthy when Christine does not only seek to form any outside friendships but also to prevent her sister from doing so, also. And then it gets disturbing...[/color]
[color=#808080]I did like "Murderous Maids", especially with Sylvie Testud anchoring the movie with a great performance as someone constantly on the verge of losing her sanity.(Her similarily great performance in "Fear and Trembling" took some of the same emotions and moved them in a comic direction.) I thought the family history could have been detailed better but the movie succeeds by focusing on the relationship of the two sisters and does not seek to sensationalize or romanticze any of it. I am slightly disappointed that the movie missed a chance at being more of a political statement than it occasionally hinted at.[/color]
Super Reviewer
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Foreign Titles
- Murderous Maids (Les Blessures assassines) (DE)
- Murderous Maids (Les Blessures assassines) (UK)
