Melanie Laurent is a famous French actress who is still best remembered as Shosanna from Tarantino’s revisionist madness “Inglorious Basterds”, and as much as she acts, Laurent has dedicated herself to directing in recent years. After directing the crime drama “Galveston” in America, written by “True Detective” creator Nico Pizzolat, she returned home to shoot a costumed combination of thriller and drama that takes us back to 1885. “Le bal des folles” or “The Mad Women’s Ball” is as much a psychological drama as it is a melodrama, and Laurent herself worked on the adaptation of the novel of the same name by Victoria Maas. And it is a shocking and at times truly shocking drama about the fates that many women had to go through not so long ago, and Laurent confirmed in this most ambitious film so far that she is a skilled and extremely capable director.
Until a hundred or so years ago, when a woman deviated from her imaginary behavior, she would be diagnosed with hysteria. Of course, psychology as a science only became recognized in the 20th century, and since the word hysteria comes from the Greek hyster for the uterus, it was assumed that only women could get it. Hysteria was thus used to denote neurotic disorders characteristic of women caused by the female reproductive organs, which would then affect the uncontrolled emotional states that the woman would express. Really mentally ill women ended up in various improvised insane asylums, but also many who were simply problematic, rebellious and did not behave as the male members of their family imagined.
Such a fate will befall the protagonist of this film, 26-year-old Eugenie (Lou de Laage), the daughter of an aristocrat from high Parisian society who will send her to the Salpetriere “clinic” against her will after she speaks publicly to see ghosts. And it looks more like a medieval dungeon than a psychiatric facility, and the methods of treatment are appalling. Treatments in ice water, long periods in solitary confinement, hypnosis, and to suspect that many of these women have been abused by these, let’s call them doctors, therapists, many of whom are disturbed sadists who simply use the opportunity and can literally do whatever they want with these unfortunates. and completely unpunished. The highlight of this is literally freak shows where grotesque balls are organized, and various curious guys come to watch these costumed quasi-parties.
The head nurse at the clinic is Genevieve (Laurent) who is completely cold, but it will become clear to us that she does not support the methods used there. In time, she will connect with Eugenie, who refuses to submit and continues to the horror of everyone around her, claiming that she can communicate with the dead, which constantly brings her into trouble, but it will bring her closer to her head sister. And it seems from beginning to end extremely realistic, convincing, as a strong social commentary devoid of sentimentality and sweetness often inevitable with melodramas. The young French actress De Laage also carries this story with a convincing performance, and it was definitely a quality film worthy of attention.
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