The Mad Women's Ball

Name: The Mad Women's Ball
Genre: Thriller
Released: September 17, 2021
Duration: 121 min
Rating: 72
Cast: André Marcon, Benjamin Voisin, Cédric Kahn, César Domboy, Christophe Montenez

2021

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Generally favorable reviews based on 14 Critic Reviews

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Mixed or average reviews based on 8 Ratings

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Movie Details & Credits

Amazon Prime Video | Release Date (Streaming): September 17, 2021 | Not Rated

Starring: André Marcon, Benjamin Voisin, Cédric Kahn, César Domboy, Christophe Montenez, Coralie Russier, Emmanuelle Bercot, Grégoire Bonnet, Lou de Laâge, Martine Chevallier, Mélanie Laurent, Valérie Stroh

Summary: A woman who is unfairly institutionalized at Paris asylum plots to escape with the help of one of its nurses. Based on the novel 'Le bal des folles' by Victoria Mas.

Director: Mélanie Laurent

Genre(s): Thriller

Rating: Not Rated

Runtime: 121 min

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Critic Reviews

The Playlist Marya E. Gates

Sep 13, 2021

Laurent’s portrait of women pushed to the edge of society, exploited, and tortured for the sake of progress is uncompromising and fearless. Read full review

RogerEbert.com Sheila O'Malley

Sep 17, 2021

The Mad Women's Ball is part psychodrama and part melodrama, and it wears those mantles proudly and confidently. Each scene throbs with urgency and emotion. Nothing is unimportant. At the same time, the film is highly controlled, with a taut assured script. Read full review

Tara Brady

Sep 17, 2021

The director and star deftly juggles social commentary, genre tension, spookiness and some fabulous period costumes (courtesy of designer Maïra Ramedhan Levi). Read full review

The Film Stage Christopher Schobert

Sep 12, 2021

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. Read full review

Alonso Duralde

Sep 12, 2021

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. Read full review

Lisa Kennedy

Sep 16, 2021

Laurent has made an elegant if overheated melodrama that amplifies the villainy of Charcot and his colleagues (one proves particularly appalling) to underscore how male-centered the medical establishment was — and is. Read full review

Steven Scaife

Sep 13, 2021

The film capsizes in the absence of a compelling center for Mélanie Laurent to hang her directorial panache. Read full review

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User Reviews

Mauro_Lanari

Oct 14, 2021

(Mauro Lanari)
Female version of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (Forman 1975), it's an impeccable attack on scientism, but spiritualism too would require new explanatory theories that Mélanie Laurent couldn't care less.

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JLuis_001

Oct 18, 2021

''Eugéne, what's happening?
Don't you see, Louise?
It's them You're what's happening to her. It's you! You're doing it! You're driving her mad!'' ''Shut her up.'' ''Oh, yes. Shut me up, doctor! Go on, shut me up! Because I know everything! I can tell you everything! What you're doing to''Eugéne, what's happening?
Don't you see, Louise?
It's them
You're what's happening to her.
It's you!
You're doing it!
You're driving her mad!''

''Shut her up.''

''Oh, yes.
Shut me up, doctor!
Go on, shut me up!
Because I know everything!
I can tell you everything!
What you're doing to us... ''

In my opinion, this film is trying to shed a light on the way women were treated in the face of the null understanding of mental illness in the 19th century.
Adding to the fact that institutionalizing them was something that was weaponized against them. Against ''difficult'' women.

That's very good, you can certainly see the idea that this film has in mind to portray a certain female empowerment, but it surprises me that with so many women involved and even with a female director, the film fails to give it an approach that goes beyond the cruelty to which they were subjected.

There's no depth. The events are simply reactionary, and even with the decent performances, there's barely anything more useful.
The hasty resolution of its climax is further evidence of this.

Perhaps this film will increase Mélanie Laurent's credits as a filmmaker, but she was far from providing a real stage for her criticism and subject matter.… Expand

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