Arnaud des Pallières’ movie is a huis-clos within the ladies’s hell of La Salpêtrière, the place the voluntary inmate performed by Mélanie Thierry discovers horror and despair.
The cinema has already taken us into the jail world of the Salpêtrière Hospital, with Alice Winocour’s “Augustine”, through which Vincent Lindon performed Professor Charcot, and “Le bal des folles”, Mélanie Laurent’s adaptation of Victoria Mas’s novel. Arnaud des Pallières’ movie “Captives” (out January 24) as soon as once more focuses on this well-known ball, a social occasion the place the entire of Paris got here to indulge. However whereas the preparations are busy, it’s solely within the ultimate part that we witness the final dance of its type, in 1894.
On the Deauville Movie Competition, the place the movie was premiered, the director was accompanied by a few of his actresses: Mélanie Thierry, Carole Bouquet, Josiane Balasko, Dominique Frot… fairly a forged, accomplished on display by Marina Foïs and Yolande Moreau. “The nice journey of this movie was the presence of all these very totally different ladies, not all of whom had been actresses. It was very transferring for all of us, and I feel there was one thing very particular happening,” says Arnaud des Pallières, referring to those extras, a few of whom had been sick.
“Captives” opens with a close-up on the arms of a lady in shackles, a chic girl in a blue coat and hat, humiliated as quickly as she arrives, and instantly subjected to shock remedy (undressing, chilly water tub, glass of bromide…). It’s Fanni, performed by Mélanie Thierry, who’s quickly subjected to the authoritarianism of the warden (Josiane Balasko), and above all the actual villain of the piece, a merciless nurse impeccably performed by Marina Foïs, who we uncover to be “mad amongst madwomen”.
“Right here, no girl is loopy”.
In reality, Fanni voluntarily dedicated herself to this asylum, with out telling anybody, regardless that she’s a middle-class girl with a husband, kids and a snug life, who gave all of it as much as come and search for her mom, who disappeared thirty years in the past and should have been locked up right here all that point. “Right here, no girl is loopy,” says Hersilie Rouy (performed by Carole Bouquet), who can be a captive, however advantages from preferential remedy attributable to her rank and standing as a middle-class girl who has been locked up by her brother for fourteen years.
On this ladies’s hell, the place she is now trapped, Fanni is only one of many, not all delinquents, “hysterics” or prostitutes, however undesirable for one purpose or one other, locked up by the abusive society of males. She discovers violence, distress, arbitrariness, mistreatment, straitjackets, brutality, ache, injustice… but in addition mutual help and feminine solidarity. A harrowing in digital camera expertise of horror and despair, “Captives” is a historic drama concerning the “feminine situation” and all its misfortunes.
Patrick TARDIT
“Captives”, a movie by Arnaud des Pallières, with Mélanie Thierry, Carole Bouquet, Marina Foïs, Josiane Balasko, Yolande Moreau (out January 24).
