Hauntingly evocative and provocative period drama enthrals

The Mad Women’s Ball (18+, 121 mins) Directed by Melanie Laurent Reviewed by James Croot

In French with English subtitles

★★★★1⁄2

elanie Laurent’s magnifique magnum opus is a fabulous reminder that the French don’t just make forgettable farces and cracking crime thrillers.

A costume drama par excellence, this is a sumptuous but sometimes harrowing watch, a kind of late-19th-century Girl, Interrupted, boasting two terrific performances, including one from the helmer herself. In fact, the only disappointment of this compelling tale is that, after its recent world premiere at this month’s Toronto Film Festival, you can only watch this very cinematic adaptation of Victoria Mas’ 2019 novel Le bal des folles on Amazon Prime Video.

The first film in French to be produced by Jeff Bezos’ global streamer, it is the story of Eugenie Clery (a luminous Lou de Laage), a progressive, well-read and sociable young woman who is determined to live her own life. But her penchant for salon debates, cafes and thought-provoking poetry is much to the chagrin of her more traditional father (Cedric Khan).

‘‘The little fool is always embarrassing me,’’ he opines.

After Eugenie publicly expresses her opposition to debutante balls and their ilk, describing them as ‘‘degrading’’, his patience begins to wear thin, warning her that she is placing the entire family’s name and reputation in jeopardy.

However, it isn’t such a berating that reduces the normally confident Eugenie to a subsequent gibbering mess, but rather an encounter with someone from ‘‘the other side’’. She has been plagued by such visions and voices for some time, but now they are threatening her sanity. ‘‘I know what happens to girls like you,’’ her brother Theophile (Benjamin Voisin) frets when she confides in him. And sure enough, Eugenie’s last chance to redeem herself in her father’s eyes turns out to be a ruse, a trip that, thanks to one stroke of butt heads with the asylum’s her papa’s pen, ends up with her matron, Genevieve Gleizes being institutionalised at Paris’ (Laurent), but when she reveals Salpetriere Asylum. intimate details that only the

Joining a collection of latter’s dearly departed sister ‘‘psychotic and idiotic’’ women would know, Genevieve’s staunch from all strata of French society, stance begins to soften, and she many of whose diagnoses were begins to question the methods and apparently missed by a ‘‘traditional efficacy of her workplace. medical examination’’, Eugenie From an evocative, immersive finds herself subjected to appalling opening at the funeral of famed and humiliating treatments such as author Victor Hugo, to a finale that solitary confinement and ice baths. is both grotesque and deeply

At times, it’s a place of barely satisfying, The Mad Women’s Ball controlled chaos, with definite is truly captivating viewing. suggestions that some of the Laurent, best known outside doctors are abusing their positions France for her acting roles in of power. At first, Eugenie’s Hollywood films like Inglourious defiance and ‘‘abilities’’ see her Basterds and Beginners, does a superb job of creating a sense of space and place and eliciting emotion out of the audience.

As well as the rage-inducing treatment of the ‘‘inmates’’, the script also offers interesting questions about spirituality – Eugenie questioning how it is deemed ‘‘acceptable to believe in God’’ when her connections are deemed an abhorrent aberration.

Evocative, provocative and boasting some seriously top-notch production design and costuming, The Mad Women’s Ball will haunt you for days afterwards.

The Mad Women’s Ball is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.