"Pull it tight. I need to be held in." It’s in the midst of a corseted society where men have all the rights, and in a large bourgeois residence where two maids are busying themselves in the basement kitchen while their three "masters" (a couple and a bedridden elderly woman) orchestrate everyday life, that refined and subtle director Jérôme Bonnell thrusts us by way of his 8th feature film, La Condition, which is released in French cinemas on 10 December via Diaphana.

"I’ve had enough. I could be nasty about it (…) I’ve never seen you totally naked." Behind the conformist facade of the early 20th century, Victoire (Louise Chevillotte) and André (Swann Arlaud) lead an unhappy and childless married life, the young woman preferring to sleep in a separate room given her lack of appetite for physical contact with her husband ("I don’t like it to last too long"). The latter spends almost every night in the section of the house he uses for work (he’s a notary), while his highly temperamental mother (Emmanuelle Devos) is also confined to a bedroom, left mute (communicating via a little blackboard and chalk) and with reduced mobility by a series of attacks, but intent on exasperating everyone by tapping on furniture with her cane until someone comes to take care of her.

So it is that beneath the very smooth surface of social convention, the atmosphere in this house is rather strange and slightly toxic, emphasised by the film’s lighting, courtesy of candles and oil lamps. And in this dwelling are two maids running around tirelessly, the youngest of whom, Céleste (Galatea Bellugi), is subjected to sexual assaults carried out by her employer, which she doesn’t resist for fear of losing her position. One day, however, she realises she’s pregnant and Victoire soon discovers her state. It’s a turn of events which totally upends everyone’s relationships, teasing out weaknesses and secrets…

Magnificently acted, the film (which Jérôme Bonnell adapted from Léonor de Récondoby’s novel Amours) expertly sidesteps mothball-scented approaches to historical reconstruction, whilst also offering up a stifling huis-clos with great visual prowess (beautiful photography by Pascal Lagriffoul, a knack for capturing looks, movements and emotions), from which Céleste and Victoire try to free themselves by escaping male domination. The director subtly blends this feminist air steeped in modernity into the folds of a Jean Renoir-style, socially-focused French film, resulting in a work with its very own (remarkable) identity, which is in step with a filmmaker of undeniable talent who’s ploughing his own furrow and refusing to slip into ostentatiousness.

La Condition was produced by Diaphana Films and is sold worldwide by Playtime.