In 1933, two domestic servants in Le Mans, France, were convicted of brutally murdering their employer and her daughter in a one-day trial. Despite the possibility that they were mentally deranged, no psychiatric defense was allowed. The crime, believed to be the most heinous case of women murdering women in the world, shocked the French nation and is the subject of Murderous Maids (Les blessures assassines), directed by Jean-Pierre Denis. Following the story in Paulette Houdyer’s L’affaire Papin (1988), the film presents a scenario of events that is perhaps more plausible than four previous efforts–three films and Jean Genet’s play The Maids. When the film begins, the two girls, sisters, are quite young. We learn that Christine Papin has been raped by her father, and the two are brought up by their irresponsible mother Clemence (played by Isabelle Renauld). Conditions at home deteriorate, so Christine is sent to a convent at the age of eleven. When she is discharged from the convent for misconduct, Christine works as a housemaid. Due to employer snobbery, Christine misbehaves, is discharged by several employers, and eventually finds employment in the Lancelin household. Christine then angles to have her younger sister Léa join her as a maid for the Lancelins, and their proximity in the same servant’s bedroom sets up the chemistry between the dominance of maternalistic Christine and the passivity of grateful Léa. Several passionate scenes portray the result after Christine assures Léa that what they are doing is not a sin. When Madame Lancelin (played by Dominique Labourier) one evening confirms her suspicion that the two are Lesbians, Christine (played by Sylvie Testud) beats her and her daughter mercilessly until they are dead. Léa (played by Julie-Marie Parmentier), hearing the sounds of the beatings, comes to see what has happened, decides to implicate herself rather than separating herself from Christine, and the two are soon arrested. While in detention, awaiting trial, Christine calls out for Léa’s so loudly that prison guards put Léa in Christine’s cell for a few minutes. Titles tell the rest of the story. Afterward, Christine calms down and never utters Léa’s name again. While Christine was given the death penalty, her sentence was commuted to life, and she died in a psychiatric hospital four years later. Léa was given a ten-year sentence; when she was released in 1943, she went to live with her mother. In an effort to track her down while the film project was underway, Léa was located living alone in Le Mans at the age of 88 unable to speak or write due to a stroke. The tagline of Murderous Maids, “It wasn’t just a crime. It was a crime of passion,” hints at the real story behind the events, namely, the class structure in France. Because they were born into poverty, they failed to get an education, and Christine was enraged as her various employers made fun of her. The shock produced in France by the murdering maids was that members of the lower class were not content to keep in their place. A subplot involved the fact that Léa’s mother had total control over her, including pocketing her salary, so long as she was a minor; Christine’s effort to emancipate her through an action of a local government official, though clumsy, was unsuccessful. Retrospectively, the French can reflect that housemaids were doubtless better treated in France thereafter, psychiatric defense is now allowed, and parental authority is no longer so absolute. MH