✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
France · 2021
2h 1m
Director Mélanie Laurent
Starring Lou de Laâge, Mélanie Laurent, Emmanuelle Bercot, Benjamin Voisin
Genre Drama, Thriller
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After confiding to her grandmother that she can see spirits, Eugénie Clary is forced by her family to be treated at a neurological clinic in Paris. There she meets Geneviéve, a nurse who agrees to help Eugénie escape from her seemingly inevitable fate.
The Mad Women’s Ball avoids caricature or stereotype, though the grounds it walks may seem somewhat familiar. Laurent treads them with skill and passion, immersing us into a period wildly different and dishearteningly similar to ours.
What some might find dramatically unsatisfying about the film’s climax directly comments on the inequities of the era and the limited options offered to women, and there’s no shortage of rich storytelling, acting, and visual potency leading up to it.
The Film Stage by Christopher Schobert
The Mad Women’s Ball represents a noteworthy achievement for Laurent—a tremendously compelling, emotionally shattering period piece bearing at least three mighty performances from de Laâge, de Dietrich, and herself.
The Mad Women’s Ball capably sells the fact that Salpêtrière was a naked reflection of the institutional sexism that existed outside its walls, but Laurent’s eagerness to confront the barbarism of Charcot’s hospital tends to stifle the finer details of a story that hinges on female empowerment.
The Playlist by Marya E. Gates
Laurent’s portrait of women pushed to the edge of society, exploited, and tortured for the sake of progress is uncompromising and fearless.
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
Contrived and possibly overheated though the film might be at times, there is real storytelling gusto to it, and Laurent punches it across with relish.
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Sarah-Tai Black
Laurent is determined in mapping the depiction of the patriarchal violence endured under both the supposition of scientific method as well as the social order of the world outside of the institution; however, the film struggles to keep a similar pace and substance within its story world.
Slant Magazine by Steven Scaife
The film capsizes in the absence of a compelling center for Mélanie Laurent to hang her directorial panache.
The latest picture from Melanie Laurent is a strikingly beautiful production which delves deep into the ugliness at the roots of psychiatric medicine.
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