Arnaud des Pallières’ film is a huis-clos in the women’s hell of La Salpêtrière, where the voluntary inmate played by Mélanie Thierry discovers horror and despair.
The cinema has already taken us into the prison world of the Salpêtrière Hospital, with Alice Winocour’s “Augustine”, in which Vincent Lindon played Professor Charcot, and “Le bal des folles”, Mélanie Laurent’s adaptation of Victoria Mas’s novel. Arnaud des Pallières’ film “Captives” (out January 24) once again focuses on this famous ball, a social event where the whole of Paris came to indulge. But while the preparations are busy, it’s only in the final section that we witness the last dance of its kind, in 1894.
At the Deauville Film Festival, where the film was premiered, the director was accompanied by some of his actresses: Mélanie Thierry, Carole Bouquet, Josiane Balasko, Dominique Frot… quite a cast, completed on screen by Marina Foïs and Yolande Moreau. “The great adventure of this film was the presence of all these very different women, not all of whom were actresses. It was very moving for all of us, and I think there was something very special going on,” says Arnaud des Pallières, referring to these extras, some of whom were ill.
“Captives” opens with a close-up on the hands of a woman in shackles, an elegant woman in a blue coat and hat, humiliated as soon as she arrives, and immediately subjected to shock treatment (undressing, cold water bath, glass of bromide…). It’s Fanni, played by Mélanie Thierry, who is soon subjected to the authoritarianism of the warden (Josiane Balasko), and above all the real villain of the piece, a cruel nurse impeccably played by Marina Foïs, who we discover to be “mad among madwomen”.
“Here, no woman is crazy”.
In fact, Fanni voluntarily committed herself to this asylum, without telling anyone, even though she’s a middle-class woman with a husband, children and a comfortable life, who gave it all up to come and look for her mother, who disappeared thirty years ago and may have been locked up here all that time. “Here, no woman is crazy,” says Hersilie Rouy (played by Carole Bouquet), who is also a captive, but benefits from preferential treatment due to her rank and status as a middle-class woman who has been locked up by her brother for fourteen years.
In this women’s hell, where she is now trapped, Fanni is just one of many, not all delinquents, “hysterics” or prostitutes, but undesirable for one reason or another, locked up by the abusive society of men. She discovers violence, misery, arbitrariness, mistreatment, straitjackets, brutality, pain, injustice… but also mutual aid and female solidarity. A harrowing in camera experience of horror and despair, “Captives” is a historical drama about the “female condition” and all its misfortunes.
Patrick TARDIT
“Captives”, a film by Arnaud des Pallières, with Mélanie Thierry, Carole Bouquet, Marina Foïs, Josiane Balasko, Yolande Moreau (out January 24).
