Who am I ? The one I want to be or that I am forced to be? These existential questions, Antoine Barraud likes to ask himself. Questions that infuse his mind and that the director subsequently likes to project on the big screen. Identity is one of Antoine Barraud’s favorite themes.
For his third feature film, the French filmmaker once again places it at the heart of the enigma. In theaters Wednesday December 22, Madeleine Collins follows Judith, played by Virginie Efira, a woman who leads a double life. Little by little, the years of lies built by Judith crumble. Caught at her own game, she plunges into a vertiginous fall.
In France, Judith leads a comfortable life alongside her husband Melvil, a conductor, with whom she has two boys. When she returns to Switzerland, where she works as an interpreter, she takes off her severe bun and her earrings to find Abdel, with whom she is raising a little girl, Ninon. To leave the arms of her husband and join Abdel, she pretends to organize professional trips abroad. Ditto, to stop the tears of little Ninon who does not want to see her mother leave, she also justifies her departure by work.
/2021/12/13/phpWGon3x.jpg)
His job becomes the alibi allowing him to go back and forth between his two homes. And the ordered online souvenir gifts that she claims to have purchased on her travels only reinforce the stronghold of lies and secrets Judith has built for herself over the years. She has the answer to everything and always manages to get back on her feet even when her secret is about to explode.
/2021/12/13/phpffcsRo.jpg)
The incessant comings and goings of Judith (who is also called Margot …) and her multiple identities are not immediately explained. Is she a manipulator, a mythomaniac and in which case, has she imprisoned herself in her lie? The keys to the enigma are not given to the spectator and it is precisely this suspense that keeps us in suspense.
In his first feature film The chasms with Mathieu Amalric, the filmmaker was already addressing the theme through the story of Georges Lebrun, a researcher sent to Mexico to explore a giant abyss. When the man comes out of his exploration, he is no longer the same and his wife has to face a stranger.
If Antoine Barraud is rather a fan of linear scenarios, this time he opted for a snail structure upside down, where we start with Z to arrive at A. In Madeleine Collins, the spectator is immersed in the heart of the device. From the first scene, questions rain. The director becomes a switch by strewing here and there with clues. But it is still necessary to have clung to the start to succeed in seizing them. Little by little, the fog which surrounds the Hitchcockian Virginie Efira is dissipating.
/2021/12/13/phpz7WtGK.jpg)
At the edge of the red armchair, eyes fixed on the big screen, impossible to unhook so much Virginie Efira is captivating. Straddling between thriller and psychological drama, Madeleine Collins is a film to decipher. A puzzle that the spectator must unravel. Punctuated by twists and turns, which sometimes flirts with vaudeville, the film manages to reverse the complex, almost perverse personality of a woman trapped in her own illusion. Thrilling.
/2021/12/13/phpvzTxQn.jpg)
Gender: Drama
Director: Antoine Barraud
Actors: Virginie Efira, Bruno Salomone, Quim Gutiérrez, Jacqueline Bisset
Country : France
Duration : 01:47
Exit : 22 december 2021
Distributer : Paname Distribution
Synopsis: Judith leads a double life between Switzerland and France. On the one hand Abdel, with whom she is raising a little girl, on the other Melvil with whom she has two older boys. Little by little, this fragile balance, made up of lies, secrets and back and forth, cracks dangerously. Trapped, Judith chooses to head forward, at the risk of losing everything.