THE MAD WOMEN’S BALL

| 2021  –  122′  – Drama
Written by: Mélanie Laurent, Christophe Deslandes, Julien Decoin.
Directed by: Mélanie Laurent.
Starring: Lou de Laâge, Mélanie Laurent, César Domboy, Benjamin Voisin, Emmanuelle Bercot, Cédric Kahn, Grégoire Bonnet, Coralie Russier, André Marcon.
US Premiere COLCOA 2021.
In French with English subtitles.
An Amazon Prime release. |

Actors Lou de Laâge and Mélanie Laurent become veritable doppelgangers in Laurent’s haunting feminist chronicle of the late 19th century horrors administered on women in the name of science. Adapted from Victoria Mas’ novel Le Bal des folles, the film’s two-pronged narrative follows Eugenie (de Laâge), a young woman whose father has her committed to the Pitié-Salpêtrière mental asylum because she’s able to communicate with the dead, and Geneviève (Laurent), the clinical head nurse at the hospital during the reign of distinguished neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot and his “groundbreaking” treatments. Their fates gradually intertwine, as two women — equally impotent, equally trapped — in a patriarchal system in which exploitation, cruelty and sexual abuse run rampant throughout that highly respected institution.

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