BY STEVE RAMOS

Murderous Maids

Girl Trouble
Murderous Maids
Rated R
2002, Home Vision Entertainment

Director Jean-Pierre Denis adapts the most notorious French crime of the 20th century into a horrific and suspenseful thriller that's as dramatic as it is thrilling.

It's 1933 Le Mans, France, and the Papin sisters, Christine (Sylvie Testud), 28, and her younger sister Léa (Julie-Marie Parmentier), 22, work as maids for the bourgeois family of lawyer René Lancelin, serving his demanding wife and their daughter, Geneviéve. Denis, making his first feature film since 1987's Field of Honor, builds the tension slowly and steadily, showing a series of petty insults directed by Mme. Lancelin towards to the two sisters. Denis generates sympathy for the Papin sisters early in Murderous Maids. You pity them because of the abusive the behavior they suffer at the hands of their indifferent employers and the cold, uncaring atmosphere of the large house that also serves as their home.

What Denis so cleverly does -- through the riveting performances by Testud and Parmentier -- is connect us with the Papin sisters. We are on their side. The Lancelin family is the clear enemy in Murderous Maids, much like their role in landmark books about the Papin case by philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. So when the Papin sisters sink into madness and take part in their hellish crime, there is no turning back. We have already sided with them, and that makes the film's bloody climax all the more unsettling.

Murderous Maids Grade: A

And the rest
Actor John Malkovich makes an excellent feature filmmaking debut with the menacing political thriller The Dancer Upstairs (Fox), based on author Nicholas Shakespeare's political thriller about a mysterious revolutionary, Ezequiel, who's on the verge of overturning the government of an unnamed Latin American country. Javier Bardem plays police detective Augustin Rejas, the man in charge of finding Ezequiel, with dead-on subtlety. Bardem's heavyset eyes and emotional facial expressions match the film's shadowy drama perfectly. Rich in character, deliberately told, but not overly complex, the film is a bold success for Malkovich. ... Actress Rachel Weisz has the physical assets necessary for playing Lily, the femme fatale at the heart of director James Foley's caper film Confidence (Lion's Gate); fire engine red lips, heaving breasts and bedroom eyes. What's missing is the jolt of mystery necessary to make Lily a woman capable of triple-crossing her con-man boyfriend Jake (Ed Burns). Weisz offers nothing beyond her sexy appearance and the same thing is true for the film. Granted, Foley claims a quality cast. Dustin Hoffman plays the hyper mob boss at the heart of the con. Andy Garcia is the disheveled detective on Jake's trail. Burns never clicks as the mastermind behind the con, although I place more blame on screenwriter Ed Jung. When a film is derivative, always blame the writer first.

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