DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID

DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID is the fourth movie version (and the second French language version) of a scandalous 1990 novel by George Mirbeau, an iconoclastic French anarchist, anti-capitalist, social critic, and pacifist (1848-1917), that compared domestic service to slavery. Each of the movie versions changes some story details from the original novel, with the 1946 English-language version made in Hollywood by the acclaimed French film director Jean Renoir (GRAND ILLUSION) perhaps being the least faithful because of its happy ending. Interestingly, Mirbeau was a champion of the paintings of Jean’s father, Auguste Renoir, and an early advocate of Van Gogh’s paintings.

Unlike previous versions, this new French movie is set in the time of the novel, the late 1800s near the turn of the century. It focuses on the domestic “adventures” of Célestine, a pretty but resentful and outspoken young chambermaid who finds herself exiled to a position in the French provinces. She chafes at the strict, unreasonable demands of the mistress of the house and must rebuff the advances of the husband, who apparently impregnated their last chambermaid.

Célestine becomes enamored with the gardener, a brooding, earthy Anti-Semite named Joseph. As the movie shows flashbacks of a couple previous jobs, she agrees to help Joseph steal the silver from the house and escape to a better life. Of course, by agreeing to that plan, she also becomes dependent on Joseph, just as she’s been dependent on the benevolence of her various employers. Or, so the movie’s ending suggests.

Apparently, the original novel shows that the heroine becomes the co-owner of a café where she treats her servants just as badly as she was treated. The author was a friend of the French novelist Emile Zola, with whom he lobbied in favor of Alfred Dreyfuss, a military officer convicted of treason because of virulent Anti-Semitism. Mirbeau was also an anti-capitalist, misanthropic anarchist, who believed money corrupted all classes, but the wealthy most of all.

At any rate, DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID is an absorbing movie with many spot-on performances. However, it has a strong Romantic, anti-capitalist, feminist worldview and misanthropic view of humanity. There’s a relatively positive scene set in a church, but the movie depicts the Anti-Semitic gardener spreading Anti-Semitic literature with help from some unseen priests (The original novel’s author was virulently anti-clerical because of his view of massive corruption in the Catholic Church. There’s a suspicion he may have been abused by a priest himself when he was a child attending a Catholic school and/or knew of other similar abuses). CHAMBERMAID also contains strong foul language and brief explicit content. So, media-wise viewers will find DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID unacceptable.

MOVIEGUIDE® has no doubt there probably was indeed widespread abuse of women and the poor in France at the time this novel was written. Certainly, the infamous Dreyfuss Affair shows there was widespread Anti-Semitism in the country. However, all this evil can be laid at the doorstep of man himself and his sinful nature, not God or belief in God. By 1900, the De-Christianization of Europe, including France, Germany and Britain, had come a long way. In fact, France had gone from being a tyrannical monarchy supported by a corrupt, ineffectual Catholic Church to a mostly secular country that could often be strongly anti-clerical. So, if there was widespread oppression and abuse of the powerless in France during the 1800s and early 1900s, one could just as easily blame it on the widespread atheism and secularism on a national level and on heresy within the church itself, both Catholic Churches and Protestant ones, more than any other factors. Thus, the answer to sin of all kinds is not atheism or radical social reform, but Christian revival that focuses on Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit and the Bible to transform people’s characters and, eventually, their lives, for the better.