When Catherine hires the enigmatic, taciturn Sophie as a maid at her family’s remote mansion, only a slight unease ripples beneath the discreet formality of La Cérémonie. Detached and automated, Sophie’s odd behavior quietly evolves from mildly amusing to inexplicably disturbing. As the family’s charitable attempts to comprehend Sophie’s idiosyncrasies fall flat, she latches onto the town’s eccentric postmistress who fills Sophie’s silences with her own bitter assumptions about the wealthy family’s sins and excesses. Disrupting social convention, the symbiotic duo uncover subtle layers of hypocrisy and condescension among a comfortable society bound by unspoken contracts and rituals. Sophie’s secret flaw only explains part of the cold ceremony she too seems ordained to conduct. – BG