"Madeleine Collins" -- Movie Review

 

On the final weekend of Lincoln Center’s French Film Festival, I attended a screening of the new psychological thriller, “Madeleine Collins”, starring Virginie Efira, (from Paul Verhoeven’s controversial “Benedetta”). 

Synopsis

When a woman lives two lives, will she be able to maintain this deceit without being discovered?

Story

Judith (Efira) leads a fulfilling life in France.  From a professional standpoint, she works as a translator and frequently must travel internationally.  Unfortunately, this takes her away from her beloved family:  her husband Melvil, a renowned orchestra conductor and their two adolescent sons.  Margot lives in the French region of Switzerland; married to Abdel, a more blue-collar worker, they both dote over their little daughter Ninon.  Ninon is always upset when her mother must travel for weeks at a time because Margot also works as a translator.  This is no mere coincidence.  Both Judith and Margot are the exact same woman. 

When being Judith, she tries to be supportive of Melvil as his career begins to take off; meanwhile, her oldest teenage son is suspicious that something is up with his mother – their relationship deteriorates as he finds he can no longer trust her.  Betraying his father is one thing, but she appears to be betraying the entire family.  During her life as Margot, she seeks to be super-human as mother, wife and career-woman; she plays with Ninon and attempts to keep Abdel happy in her role as the dutiful wife.  Unfortunately, she’s spread herself a bit too thin and things start falling apart both at home and at work.

All of this is beginning to wear her down both emotionally and physically; she’s having increasing episodes that require medication – which she explains away as being low blood pressure.  Eventually, her parents become aware of what she’s been doing and her mother (Jacqueline Bisset) is so upset that she distances herself from her daughter, whereas her father is more sympathetic.  She even has to venture into the black market in order to purchase fake identification – which is not always terribly convincing.  When a police investigation finds some rather fishy behavior, will she wind up in jail, causing her to lose her family and job?

Review

Whether or not it is done intentionally, “Madeleine Collins” is one of the best homages to Hitchcock you could possibly see.  The structure of the film is a bit puzzling; you don’t quite know it at the time, but you are discovering the ending at the beginning – something which completely makes sense by the resolution.  The initial scene is particularly well done because it is all shot in one fluid motion via Steadicam – no edits.  From the point of view of the screenplay, care is taken not to reveal too much early on – you never can be certain exactly where the story is going and that is what keeps you engaged throughout. 

The superb performance by Virginie Efira really enhances the experience; her character – whomever she may be at any given moment – is melting down and unraveling the further she gets into her cover-up.  She ultimately realizes she’s burrowed herself so far down a rabbit hole, not even she can climb herself out of this labyrinthian warren of trickery – and it’s not entirely clear she wants to get out, at least not all of the time.  Her sense of desperation and isolation makes the audience feel a sense of ambivalence -- we are sympathetic towards this woman, despite the fact that she’s deliberately trying to fool everyone close to her in her life (possibly even herself).  Efira’s character is not portraying different people so much as the same person in different contexts.

Following the screening, there was an interview with director Antoine Barraud.  He said that the key to directing actors is 75% in casting and 30% whom they play against.  In other words, – will the actor playing opposite them in a given scene cause the actor to give their best performance?  Although many people have compared his film to “Vertigo”, Barraud claims that he thinks of it as more of a family drama like “Kramer Vs. Kramer”.  Barraud mentioned that he never actually attended film school; for him, he instead studied film by spending a quarter of a century watching other people’s movies.