ANOTHER CASE OF CLASS CONFLICT : THE FACTS.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Critic

The latest, realistically droll crime spree from France's prolific Claude Chabrol, ``La Ceremonie,'' has just been named Best Foreign Language Film by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. And while it's not top-shelf Chabrol, this coolly vicious, intelligent romp is an excellent choice considering this year's sorry competition.

Featuring two of France's most powerful actresses, Isabelle Huppert and Sandrine Bonnaire, ``La Ceremonie'' starts out schematically and builds slowly before ever so elegantly losing its mind. Bonnaire is Sophie, the mysterious but efficient new housekeeper at the country chateau of the well-to-do Lelievres (Jacqueline Bisset and Jean-Pierre Cassel). She seems a bit odd, somewhat robotic. The truth is, Sophie is illiterate and tries to hide it.

But that isn't all she's hiding. Huppert's Jeanne, the local postal clerk, detects a kindred spirit in Sophie, even though she's as outgoing and rowdy as the domestic is demure. When we learn the outlines of each woman's shocking pasts, we can see why they connect.

Jeanne hates the Lelievres on the grounds that they're rich and she's not. She tries to encourage a similar social resentment in her new friend, but it's hard since Sophie's primary frame of reference is what she sees on TV game shows. For his part, M. Lelievre is convinced Jeanne is opening his mail (he's probably right), and forbids Sophie to see her anymore. Big mistake.

Hardly anyone, even in Europe, makes movies explicitly about class conflict anymore. Chabrol, whose strongest influences are Alfred Hitchcock and what might be construed as a hybrid of Karl and Groucho Marx, has always had a reputation as an irreverent critic of bourgeois values (his last movie to make it over here was an uncharacteristically listless adaptation of ``Madame Bovary'').

In ``La Ceremonie,'' however, Chabrol seems to have as good a time at the expense of the economically downtrodden as he does with their purported oppressors. Sophie isn't just ignorant, she's comically stupid (wisely, Bonnaire plays her with dull, abject humorlessness). Jeanne is, quite simply, a monster; if she had been born 200 years earlier, you can picture her cackling contentedly in the guillotine peanut gallery.

The film: ``La Ceremonie'' (NR; violence, language).

The stars: Isabelle Huppert, Sandrine Bonnaire, Jacqueline Bisset, Jean-Pierre Cassel.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Claude Chabrol. Written by Chabrol and Caroline Eliacheff, based on Ruth Rendell's novel, ``A Judgement in Stone.'' Produced by Marin Karmitz. Released by New Yorker Films.

Running time: One hour, 51 minutes.

Playing: Goldwyn Pavilon, West Los Angeles; Esquire, Pasadena; Town Center 5, Encino.

Our rating: three stars.

CAPTION(S):

Photo

Photo: Jeanne (Isabelle Huppert), the local postal clerk, detects a kindred spirit in the mysterious new housekeeper in ``La Ceremonie.''