For generations, women who pushed against their expected roles in life were written off as mad, and in extreme cases, locked away. For equally as long, these women were fodder for art that depicted their madness as evil. In this last century, we’ve seen contemporary women take back their sister’s agency. Like Antoinette Cosway, the madwoman in the attic from Charlotte Brontë‘s 1847 novel “Jane Eyre”, given agency by Jean Rhys in her 1966 feminist revisioning “Wide Sargasso Sea.” The same can be said for Victoria Mas, whose novel “Le bal des folles” and its subsequent adaptation, “The Mad Women’s Ball,” by Mélanie Laurent (with co-writer Christophe Deslandes) seeks to reclaim the agency of “mad” women were treated less as people and more as experiments at France’s infamous Salpêtrière mental hospital.
Continue reading ‘The Mad Women’s Ball’: Mélanie Laurent’s Latest Drama Is An Uncompromising Defense Of...
Continue reading ‘The Mad Women’s Ball’: Mélanie Laurent’s Latest Drama Is An Uncompromising Defense Of...
- 9/13/2021
- by Marya E. Gates
- The Playlist
Mélanie Laurent adapted, directs and stars in The Mad Women’s Ball (Le Bal Des Folles), a French Amazon Original that premiered in the Galas section at the Toronto International Film Festival. Lou de Laâge, who worked with Laurent in Breathe, co-stars in the moving story of oppressed women in late 19th century France. Based on the novel by Victoria Mas, it blends real-life characters with fictional ones in the disturbing setting of a mental institution.
Eugénie (de Laâge) is a well-heeled French girl who craves the education and experience men like her brother can enjoy. She also sees dead people — not all the time, but enough to concern her family. “I know what happens to girls like you,” says Eugénie’s worried brother, and sure enough, her father soon carts her off to La Pitié Salpétrière Hospital, the real-life clinic in Paris run by celebrated neurology pioneer Dr Charcot (Grégoire Bonnet...
Eugénie (de Laâge) is a well-heeled French girl who craves the education and experience men like her brother can enjoy. She also sees dead people — not all the time, but enough to concern her family. “I know what happens to girls like you,” says Eugénie’s worried brother, and sure enough, her father soon carts her off to La Pitié Salpétrière Hospital, the real-life clinic in Paris run by celebrated neurology pioneer Dr Charcot (Grégoire Bonnet...
- 9/13/2021
- by Anna Smith
- Deadline Film + TV
With the TIFF world premiere The Mad Women’s Ball (Le Bal des folles), Mélanie Laurent proves again to be an equal force in front of and behind the camera. There are the deeply memorable performances in Inglourious Basterds, Le Concert, Beginners, Enemy, and Alexandre Aja’s Oxygen. She also released a lovely album, En t’attendant, in 2011; the title track features one of the most positively glorious screams ever recorded. In the last decade, Laurent has directed six films—2011’s The Adopted, 2014’s Breathe, 2015’s Tomorrow (co-helmed with Cyril Dion), 2017’s Diving, 2018’s Galveston, and now The Mad Women’s Ball. Her latest is without question her most ambitious, finest film.
The Mad Women’s Ball is an inspired spin on a familiar trope—the individual institutionalized against her will. Two elements elevate this material, from a novel by Victoria Mas (about which more here). First is the setting: Paris 1885. The...
The Mad Women’s Ball is an inspired spin on a familiar trope—the individual institutionalized against her will. Two elements elevate this material, from a novel by Victoria Mas (about which more here). First is the setting: Paris 1885. The...
- 9/13/2021
- by Christopher Schobert
- The Film Stage
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.