...it all unfolds against a lush and stunning backdrop.

| Jan 6, 2021

No actress is more primed to seethe fire than Seydoux, but she's largely double-crossed by Jacquot's jittery self-indulgence.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Apr 5, 2019

It would be easy to turn Clestine into a heroine whom everyone could admire and easily identify with. [Director Benot] Jacquot is after something more complicated

| Feb 14, 2018

It's one of the bitterest dramas of Seydoux's less-than-saccharine career.

| Jan 1, 2017

Diary of a Chambermaid would make a decent first act to a television miniseries. As a film, it ends in an unfortunate whimper.

| Original Score: 4/10 | Jun 29, 2016

A bracingly nasty piece of work, contrasting brutishness at the bottom and condescension from the top.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jun 24, 2016

Jacquot expertly combines the mores of the 1900 novel and the mid-20th Century films with today's world and the result is a thought-provoking film that leaves the viewer contemplating what they have just seen. Seydoux is outstanding.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Jun 15, 2016

Jacquot makes a persuasive case for a return to the story, with a scowling, watchful Léa Seydoux in the role of a scheming chambermaid.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 15, 2016

Worth seeing as another entry in the rise of Léa Seydoux, a star of Gallic charisma if ever I've seen one.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 15, 2016

For a film that's ostensibly about passion, it feels particularly stunted.

| Original Score: C | Jun 10, 2016

The immediate effect Jacquot achieves, with quiet droll and some considerable dread, is bracing.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 10, 2016

Unfolding elliptically, the new film can feel abrupt and unsatisfying, but it's filled with sharp commentary on class and servitude, and [Seydoux] delivers another extraordinary performance.

| Jun 9, 2016

Rather than gain speed and power in its final act, as Joseph's design comes into play, the movie stalls.

| Jun 9, 2016

Has serious narrative glitches and a shaky timeline, but at least it is true to the bitterly misanthropic spirit of Octave Mirbeau's 1900 novel about masters and servants.

| Jun 9, 2016

[It's] engaging and visually stylish but loses momentum towards its end.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 9, 2016

Buñuel's wit may be absent, but Seydoux's emotional fireworks are compensatory.

| Jun 9, 2016

It touches on the novel's pessimism, decadence, and politics only in brief, fervid moments.

| Original Score: C+ | Jun 9, 2016

Jacquot and Helene Zimmer's loose adaptation of the novel acidly critiques the social rigidities of turn-of-the-century Europe, but actually mollifies the acrid irony of Mirbeau's own conclusion.

| Jun 8, 2016

It is well acted and confidently performed.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 8, 2016

Starts off promisingly with its various jibes at upper-class hypocrisy, before fizzling out in a third act that lacks the necessary emotional flair.

| Jun 8, 2016