A young woman reports to work as a chambermaid at the residence of an eccentric family in the French countryside. Moreau is fine as the maid, a strong-willed woman who attracts the attention of practically every man in the household and neighborhood. Geret as a servant and Piccoli as the testosterone-laden man of the house also turn in notable performances. In one of his more accessible films, Bunuel creates some beautiful imagery with his wide-screen black and white cinematography. However, the script is uneven, with the plot point concerning the rape and murder of a child mixing uneasily with the political and comedic elements. The conclusion is abrupt and unsatisfying.

Director Buñuel is infamous for his many movies that are attacks on contemporary society--in particular, the evils of the idle rich and right-wing thinking. This movie along with Exterminating Angel, Belle de Jour, The Discrete Charm of the Boureoise and That Obscure Object of Desire along with MANY other of his movies all attack Western culture--focusing on its hypocrisy and wickedness. In general, Socialists and left-leaning thinkers tend to view his films a lot more favorably than Conservatives and the Church (that's putting it mildly).

Diary of a Chambermaid will not disappoint if this is what you are looking for in a film. Among the MANY vices of the characters in the film are fetishes, sexual repression, murder, rape and antisemitism. Our main character, the decent chambermaid (played by Jeanne Moreau) tries to do the right thing although by the end of the film the utter futility of this is revealed.

When I watched the film, I tried to ignore the fact that I do not share the director's world view. If you just look at this film alone, it is a pretty entertaining movie with excellent acting, an unusual and interesting script and excellent pacing. However, it also, from time to time, got a little annoying as, in Buñuel's world, nearly everyone is corrupt--especially the rich. That's because, in a way, they seemed cartoonish--lampoons instead of people. While I'm sure there are a lot of hypocritical and sleazy rich folks out there, it's almost like propaganda to portray ALL of them again and again so negatively. As a result, they are all boiled down to stereotypes. This one-dimensionality prevented the movie from receiving a higher rating than 7.

The first time I saw Diary of a Chambermaid I did like it, but I didn't find it as fulfilling as some of Luis Bunuel's other later films made in France. There was something that didn't really seem to snap up and draw me in with his usual biting satire. A second viewing, however, had me really focus though not for what wasn't there but what was. Like more than a few other Bunuel films, some of them in France and others in Mexico, the style Bunuel uses for Diary of a Chambermaid is very controlled, not static but rather formal and, in its paradoxical way to Bunuel's intentions, restrained. But it's this very restraint and formality- both in the camera and how the characters interact- that helped make it clearer for me, and more interesting. One does have to put it into context, not just from the time period the story is set in, decades before the film was made, but also how these kinds of bourgeoisie dramas were made in France and elsewhere in Europe. For a moment I'm even reminded of Rules of the Game by showing both the lower and upper classes in one such estate. There isn't really a specific story as much as a series of events leading Celestine (the always beautiful Jeanne Moreau) through her time as maid for the Monteils and up to finally breaking free of their own repressive ways.

This isn't made really clear until later in the film, including what must have been a 'hot' scene in 1964 for French and other audiences as Moreau is in some kinky maid-wear (it's one of my favorite scenes from the film). However seeing it a second time I found it funnier once I could get more into what these perverse, strange, corrupted characters were all about, on both the servant and served sides. The Monsieur, for example, has a certain fetish for high-heeled footwear, which elicits a nice laugh, if not a big one. And then a farmer, who is practically drooling over Celestine, suddenly has to cope with the fact that she is, of course, from Paris of all places. But then the story does thicken with the murder part. The goods that come with Diary of a Chambermaid, as envisioned by Bunuel, is really in him seeing through the conventional- which he puts forward almost TOO well- and finding enough to criticize and have little bits of fun with. It's these circumstances that pop up for Celestine that all make their toll, even if its not very constant. It's not a surreal-style movie in the Bunuel mode, but he still makes some time to not let anyone off the hook; Celestine does do an about-face from how she previously acted, though so much has happened with the other characters that it's not too much of a surprise.

In fact, it's on a very subtle level nearly reaches the gleeful vulgarity and near moral decay of Bunuel's masterwork Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. If it isn't as accessible it's because it's more riffing on another work than the surefire confidence and bravura of an original piece. And the same lucidity that is laid as the groundwork, when not marked over by Bunuel's obsessions and satire (if not surrealism),almost comes close to making a scene or two duller than need be- plus, as others have noted, the bad ending. Nevertheless it's a splendid take on what is really dark subject matter, put into (for the only time for the director) anamorphic widescreen to put these character even more into the fullness of the hypocrisies. It's subversion done with tact, and the star of it, as par for the great string of films she had, is near perfect. And at least the director leaves his most featured small-role actress, Muni, get out clean.