I think that by the end of this film there can be no doubt that both women carry homicidal tendencies. Their 'revenge' on the family was brutal and thoroughly undeserved in my opinion.
The family themselves are a paradigm of a modern, loving unit. The parents are happy to let their children drive, smoke and have boyfriends back to the house, they dine together and occasionally sit down together to watch opera on their enormous television. They are well off and bourgeois, but they do not treat Sophie with disrespect. Even upon discovering her illiteracy Melinda is sympathetic and offers help, although it could have been perceived as patronising by the ever victimised Sophie. If there has to be a villain within the family then it is the father. He complains about her once or twice and tries to ban Jeanne from the house. It is he, also, who fires her in the end, but this decision is justified in my opinion after her underhanded behaviour towards Melinda.
If the family are innocent then Jeanne and Sophie certainly are not. At first Sophie is presented sympathetically: struggling to pronounce 'pouvez' alone in her room with a children's' reading book, and we share in her relief when the note she is agonising over is read aloud. This sympathy is instantly lost, however, when she is discovered and tries to blackmail Melinda.
It appears to be Jeanne's influence which turns her into such a rebel. It is Jeanne who instigates the ridiculous purging of people's donations in the name of the 'Secours Catholiques', and it is in reference to Jeanne's ban from the house that Sophie remarks 'Je ne vais pas l'obeyir' (I am not going to obey him). They also ransack the house at the end as a pair. They are capable of acting as rebels alone: Jeanne's reaction to the father's complaint at the post office, Sophie eavesdropping on Melinda's conversation, but the end proves that it is when they are together that they become the most extreme. It is Sophie who fires the first shot, suggesting that she is not just under Jeanne's influence, but that she is also a driving force in the couple's actions.
As regards an 'us vs them' ideology, possibly alluring to some sort of socialist revolutionary slant on the film, there is some evidence certainly: the contrast between her rickety 2CV and the cars that the family drive, and the fact that Sophie is under their employ to begin with shows a level of social hierarchy. But as for the oppression of the proletariat, there is no evidence that Sophie is shown any disrespect, their revolution to me is more of a cold blooded massacre. In order to have an us versus them scenario there has to be some opposition on each side; this situation appears more of an 'us ambushing them unprovoked'. The fact that Jeanne is killed and that the tape recorder is found is not to show the plight of a futile revolution, but instead to provide justice, to show that shooting a whole family for no good reason does not go unpunished.
Instead of the idea of an 'us vs them' struggle, I saw the film as a played out inferiority complex. Sophie was convinced they were out to get her because of her illiteracy, and she built up such a victimised view of the world that it was impossible to conceive of that people were prepared to look past it. Although obviously capable of violence on her own, given her suspect past, it is the meeting with Jeanne, who has an irrational hatred of the rich, and a similar paranoia that they hate her back, that acts as the catalyst for the blood bath finale.
The family themselves are a paradigm of a modern, loving unit. The parents are happy to let their children drive, smoke and have boyfriends back to the house, they dine together and occasionally sit down together to watch opera on their enormous television. They are well off and bourgeois, but they do not treat Sophie with disrespect. Even upon discovering her illiteracy Melinda is sympathetic and offers help, although it could have been perceived as patronising by the ever victimised Sophie. If there has to be a villain within the family then it is the father. He complains about her once or twice and tries to ban Jeanne from the house. It is he, also, who fires her in the end, but this decision is justified in my opinion after her underhanded behaviour towards Melinda.
If the family are innocent then Jeanne and Sophie certainly are not. At first Sophie is presented sympathetically: struggling to pronounce 'pouvez' alone in her room with a children's' reading book, and we share in her relief when the note she is agonising over is read aloud. This sympathy is instantly lost, however, when she is discovered and tries to blackmail Melinda.
It appears to be Jeanne's influence which turns her into such a rebel. It is Jeanne who instigates the ridiculous purging of people's donations in the name of the 'Secours Catholiques', and it is in reference to Jeanne's ban from the house that Sophie remarks 'Je ne vais pas l'obeyir' (I am not going to obey him). They also ransack the house at the end as a pair. They are capable of acting as rebels alone: Jeanne's reaction to the father's complaint at the post office, Sophie eavesdropping on Melinda's conversation, but the end proves that it is when they are together that they become the most extreme. It is Sophie who fires the first shot, suggesting that she is not just under Jeanne's influence, but that she is also a driving force in the couple's actions.
As regards an 'us vs them' ideology, possibly alluring to some sort of socialist revolutionary slant on the film, there is some evidence certainly: the contrast between her rickety 2CV and the cars that the family drive, and the fact that Sophie is under their employ to begin with shows a level of social hierarchy. But as for the oppression of the proletariat, there is no evidence that Sophie is shown any disrespect, their revolution to me is more of a cold blooded massacre. In order to have an us versus them scenario there has to be some opposition on each side; this situation appears more of an 'us ambushing them unprovoked'. The fact that Jeanne is killed and that the tape recorder is found is not to show the plight of a futile revolution, but instead to provide justice, to show that shooting a whole family for no good reason does not go unpunished.
Instead of the idea of an 'us vs them' struggle, I saw the film as a played out inferiority complex. Sophie was convinced they were out to get her because of her illiteracy, and she built up such a victimised view of the world that it was impossible to conceive of that people were prepared to look past it. Although obviously capable of violence on her own, given her suspect past, it is the meeting with Jeanne, who has an irrational hatred of the rich, and a similar paranoia that they hate her back, that acts as the catalyst for the blood bath finale.