The
Actor turns director again for a compelling psychodrama about
Women subjected to experimental psychiatric treatment
![The Mad Woman’s Ball review – Mélanie Laurent’s compelling melodrama](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/d5b65230c06d066f92af330af14df73a1896dc91/0_355_2742_1645/master/2742.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctcmV2aWV3LTQucG5n&enable=upscale&s=9b78a4881d7f4fc1811eb74c3d297bb9)
Since her acting breakthrough as the defiant Shosanna in Quentin Tarantino’s Nazi thriller Inglourious Basterds, Mélanie Laurent has cultivated a flourishing parallel career in as a director. Now she pulls out all the stops with this highly watchable and well-made costume drama from the French belle époque, a vehement psychological melodrama of romance and the supernatural, set in a sinister neuro-psychiatric hospital where supposedly hysterical women are incarcerated and subjected to clinical surveillance and experimental treatment by frowning, frock-coated men. (It is in fact Paris’s Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital, which has now evolved into a modern-day teaching institution and was a setting for Agnès Varda’s Cleo from 5 to 7.)
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