* * *
A reliable rule of thumb for cinema-going is that any movie arriving with advance buzz pegging it as “Hitchcockian” is bound to underwhelm. Meeting that standard proves difficult for most filmmakers, and even Hitch didn’t always achieve it. Have you tried watching “Marnie” recently?
Yet we get the point: This or that movie will tread upon duplicitous or troubling ground and do so with a mordant strain of wit and a dash of style, and so it is with “Madeleine Collins,” the new film directed by Antoine Barraud and written in conjunction with Héléna Klotz. It’s a frustrating picture for reasons that are both fictive and formal.
The title character is portrayed by Virginie Efira, whose previous film, “Revoir Paris,” recently finished its theatrical run. We don’t hear the name “Madeleine Collins” until the final minutes of the film, and Ms. Efira’s character, Judith Fauvet, assumes other noms de plume as the plot becomes increasingly tangled. Why all the subterfuge?
In the opening moments of the film, a lithe young woman with long blonde hair is shopping at an upscale boutique. In her conversations with the staff, we learn that the woman’s mother has given her a substantial amount of money to spend on herself. She’s reluctant to do so, but ultimately takes a handful of high-end gowns into the dressing room.
When she doesn’t answer the attendant’s queries after a few moments of silence, security is called for: The woman has fainted. Upon awakening, she walks out of the store in a befuddled state and then is subject to an event to which we, as viewers, are not privy to. A lot of blood is involved. That’s all we know.
It’s an effective opening, suffused, as it is, with dread and then culminating in mystery. At which point, we enter into Judith’s life. Can we be forgiven for mistaking her for the woman at the boutique? They cut very similar figures. Whatever the case, Judith is at home with Abdel (Quim Gutierrez) and their young daughter Ninon (Loïse Benguerel). Ninon’s first day of school is fast approaching and Abdel just landed a job through the good graces of a friend of Judith’s. In the meantime, our heroine continues her duties as a translator for an international concern at Geneva.
Then, Judith has to leave the country for work — or so she tells Ninon. Abdel knows better: Judith is meeting her husband Melvil (Bruno Salomone), a renowned conductor of orchestras who is on the verge of a significant new position. Melvil and Judith have two sons, the older of whom, Joris (Thomas Gioria), suspects that there’s something afoot with mom’s extended absences. Judith’s mother and father, played by the forever luminous Jacqueline Bisset and an endearingly loopy François Rostain, offer a backstory that, eventually, clues us in to what’s happening up front.
All the while, Mr. Barraud strews clues to the complications of Judith’s double life as if they were breadcrumbs. The frustrations inherent in the picture key into Judith’s obfuscations and the “snail structure” of “Madeleine Collins” — a plot that goes, as Mr. Barraud has it, from Point Z to Point A.
In other words, we don’t much like the harm Judith is inflicting upon those she cares about, even as we eventually understand the reasoning behind her deviousness. That, and the director’s machinations in the third act become pronounced to the degree that the credulity of the story is sorely tested.
There’s much to admire in “Madeleine Collins.” Primary among them is Gordon Spooner’s cinematography, which casts a golden hue upon the proceedings, particularly during moments of glitz and privilege. Katia Wyszkop and Claire Dubien, respectively designers of production and costume, bring along an old school aesthetic that proves ravishing even in the film’s mundane settings.
Then there’s Ms. Efira, who holds the screen with an authority that is as hard to resist as it is naturelle. That she comes close to redeeming the plot’s more tenuous contortions is testament to the seductive power of stardom played close to the vest.
(c) 2023 Mario Naves
This article was originally published in the August 16 2023 edition of The New York Sun.
Too Much Art 