Mélanie Laurent tailored, directs and stars in The Mad Girls’s Ball (Le Bal Des Folles), a French Amazon Unique that premiered within the Galas part on the Toronto Worldwide Movie Competition. Lou de Laâge, who labored with Laurent in Breathe, co-stars within the transferring story of oppressed ladies in late nineteenth century France. Primarily based on the novel by Victoria Mas, it blends real-life characters with fictional ones within the disturbing setting of a psychological establishment.
Eugénie (de Laâge) is a well-heeled French woman who craves the schooling and expertise males like her brother can get pleasure from. She additionally sees useless individuals — not on a regular basis, however sufficient to concern her household. “I do know what occurs to women such as you,” says Eugénie’s anxious brother, and certain sufficient, her father quickly carts her off to La Pitié Salpétrière Hospital, the real-life clinic in Paris run by celebrated neurology pioneer Dr Charcot (Grégoire Bonnet).
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Charcot will not be fairly so celebrated by the sufferers, whether or not they’re being humiliated in public hypnosis demonstrations or tortured with ice baths within the identify of “hydrotherapy.” However Eugénie’s method with the useless would possibly simply be her lifeline when she discovers that nurse Geneviève (Laurent) is grieving her sister, and longs to listen to from her.
Whereas the premise has a mystical theme, the tone is of stylized realism — we by no means see the spirits that Eugénie claims to, simply the trance that overtakes her when she receives messages from the past. These are mainly used to propel the plot ahead, slightly than to create a way of otherworldly thriller, although their veracity suggests she has a real reward.
Laurent’s chief focus is on the day by day lifetime of the ladies within the build-up to the titular ball, when they’re dressed up and paraded round for the fascination and lechery of the assembled males. These are ladies who’re identified with all the things from epilepsy to “hysteria,” blamed by males and punished by ladies enacting males’s orders.
As Laurent highlights the bitter actuality for ladies on this patriarchal establishment, the tone veers in direction of feminist jail drama. However there are additionally sparkles of pleasure that lighten the load and provides a way of the heat between the ladies. Whether or not they’re laughing, bonding or comforting one another, the ladies join in a method that feels credible and heartwarming with out being sentimental — there are shades of Woman, Interrupted right here.
There’s a placing scene wherein one affected person breaks into tune in church — these are the form of ladies that, later in historical past, could be celebrated for his or her extraordinary abilities, slightly than locked up.
Performances are sturdy; Laurent the conflicted buttoned-up nurse, de Laâge the headstrong and exquisite mystic. The parallels between the 2 central characters are primarily communicated visually: Laurent and cinematographer Nicolas Karakatsanis improve their similarities with a number of scenes wherein they mirror positions — one locked up, one other free, however in her personal form of inner jail.
The movie’s ending feels slightly rushed, however that is nonetheless a poignant interval piece that tells a compelling story about sisterhood and survival, and bodes nicely for Laurent’s subsequent feminist characteristic, The Nightingale.