The Anatomy of a Murder: Sex, Class and Violence in La Ceremonie

This study analyses The Ceremony (La Ceremonie) directed by Claude Chabrol with a particular focus into the linkages between sex, social class and violence. The psychoanalytic perspective is used in order to examine the cinematic representation of the murder and the suggested links between lesbianism and women s violent crime. The study also benefits from Marxist criticism in order to analyse the cultural and social context of the murder. It concludes that the film does not indicate lesbian desire or class struggle as a source of the murder in a conventional manner but it rather challenges the stereotypes of the murderous lesbian and the seductive and dangerous femme fatale.