Arnaud des Pallières returns to fiction with Captives, its rereading in huis-clos of the theme of the Ball des Folles which brought the whole Paris of the late 19th century... A film presented in the category GIFF Highlights (Geneva International Film Festival).
Huis-clos au femme
Fanni (Mélanie Thierry) seeks to be sent to the Parisian psychiatric hospital in La Salpêtrière to find his mother, who disappeared many years ago. It thus manages to simmer between the walls of this institution led by a rigid dean (Josiane Balasko), now order with La Douane (Marina Foïs), a fearful and violent guardian. Gradually discovering the morals of this female-only parallel society, Fanni understands that many of the women locked up do not suffer from mental illnesses...
In his dance between documentaries (Journal of America in 2022, American dust in 2011...) and fictions (Orphan in 2016 with the shock duo of the Adèle(s) of French cinema, hear Haenel and Exarchopoulos, Michael Kohlhaas In 2013 with Mads Mikkelsen...), Arnaud des Pallières proved the plasticity of his cinema and his ability to film female subjects. For his last film released in theatres at the beginning of 2024, he chose two radical choices: to make a 100% female-friendly film and to attach to a certain historical reality.
Untrapped mondanities
This reality is that of the doctor. Charcot – charlatan or real scientist, it is up to you to judge, it has in any case greatly influenced a certain Sigmund Freud... – and of its no less famous « Crazy Ball » : a meeting for the worldly Paris of that time, which then gathered at the Salpêtrière to detail the strange human zoo that Dr. Charcot deployed before their blissful eyes. This is all the more sordid that in the middle of real psychiatric cases women would be buried in prison to put them permanently on the brink of society. Loveful that we had to make disappear, sister whom we wanted to disinherit... there were opportunities not lacking to feign mental illness and put under the carpet these beings decidedly far too cumbersome.
And we must give in to Captives to dare the narrative of this counter-history resolutely unspeakable for the medicine then (even if he is by far the first to do so, for example Melanie Laurent had released his Ball of Folles for Prime Video in 2021). But this is one of the few compliments to be added to the feature film, which can also boast of its relatively convincing casting (although in constant overspeed). Indeed, filming level (a shake cam percluse of zoom effects coupled with an over-use of the background) and image (saturation of high colors and contrasts, giving an aspect to be compared to the cinema of Jeunet), Captives It'll be hard to convince.
But in his post-projection presentation, Arnaud des Pallières evoked the gargantuesque care brought to the casting of the « List » of the Captives. An incalculable number of people with more or less severe mental disorders, who ensured the garrison from the background of this feature film to a very special setting. And that's where the bastard hurts the most...
Not wrong at the crazy ball.
Indeed, no important role – hear a role influencing the course of narrative at work in Captives – was attributed to a person with a disability or mental disorder, while they literally cover the background. In a film that criticizes the staging of these « Crazy » in the voyeur ball historically organised by Charcot, it is difficult to see the repetition of the diagram within the film itself! Relegated to the bucolic painting of a background moreover little pudic (repetition screams, muddy mouths, repeated close-ups...), it is suspected that Arnaud des Pallières had a thousand reasons not to assign a principal role to a person with a mental disorder... This obviously makes less sale than the XXL casting that he deploys (Yolande Moreau, Balasko, Marina Foïs, Carole Bouquet, Mélanie Thierry), the shooting would also have been more complicated, but the effort would at least have conferred some legitimacy on the critical discourse that he maintains. Captives. In short, a good disappointment and a certain discomfort in the face of this film presented at the GIFF which will be released in the theaters in early 2024...
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