Madeleine Collins

A woman walks through the evening dress section of an elegant department store. The camera follows her as if it were one of the discreet sales people. The pace is calm. Audrey Hepburn's Holly Golightly in Breakfast At Tiffany's may come to mind with her explanation about Tiffany’s as a place where nothing really bad can happen. Which of course is wishful thinking. The woman enters a dressing room. She faints. Something happens offscreen and the film moves into a different gear. Antoine Barraud’s Madeleine Collins, written in collaboration with Héléna Klotz, starring Virginie Efira, Quim Gutiérrez, and Bruno Salomone is a highlight of Rendez-Vous with French Cinema in New York and the Glasgow Film Festival.

We first meet Judith (Efira) as she plays in a park with little 4-year-old Ninon (Loïse Benguerel). Ninon wears a tiara and has a foxtail attached to the back of her clothes. As many an upper-toddler, she combines the qualities of Beauty And The Beast. And she is not the only one, as we soon find out, who has two sides to her. In Switzerland, Judith, who works as a translator, lives with Ninon and Ninon’s father Abdel (Gutiérrez). She travels a lot, mostly to Paris by train, where she lives with her husband Melvil (Salomone), who is a famous conductor, and their two sons.

How is this possible, we are invited to ask. Clearly, if Judith were a man, the answer would be easier and less intriguing. Intricately constructed and beautifully shot (cinematography by Gordon Spooner), this portrait of a double life of a lady keeps us guessing and plotting along with each turn of events. Who is this woman and why is she doing what she is doing? Virginie Efira makes us feel for her and with her and we don’t want her to be found out, even if we ourselves don’t know completely what is going on, which is quite an accomplishment.

Barraud also populates his story with several possibly foreboding figures on the sideline. There is Jacqueline Bisset as Judith’s mother Patty, whose comments on her daughter’s “bad taste in clothes” seem ludicrous and cruel. It is Bisset’s movie star authority that makes us think twice. Her husband Francis (François Rostain), Judith’s father, is the least convincing character here, unless you read his purpose to be precisely this blandness.

Then there is Judith’s friend, the opera singer Madeleine Reynal (Valérie Donzelli), who works with Melvil and whose voice is enchanting audiences. So much so that Judith has to step out during the premiere in the middle of the performance. If this move is calculated or an emotional reaction is up to the viewer to decide. Barraud, who wove Vertigo into the plot of his previous film, Portrait Of The Artist, told me from Paris that although this time Hitchcock references were not deliberate, they may very well have been unconsciously on his mind. No one included stage performances better in cinema than the master Hitchcock. A barman (played by Frank Onana) in the theatre introduces himself to Judith as Pol “as in Paul with an o.” Does the “o”, as it does for Roger O Thornhill (impersonated by Cary Grant in North By Northwest), stand for the big emptiness in the middle of any identity?

Running into people from your past in unexpected places can be dangerous for those leading a double life. Judith’s son Joris (Thomas Gioria) asks “When you go to another country are you still my mom?” The stress of lies takes a toll on her work life, a consequence far too often forgotten in movies. Who knows what and how much? Then there are the men, strangers who find Judith irresistible and have to be kept in check. Isn’t it natural to give a false name to Georges (Guy Lafrance) from Montreal, a total stranger who invites her to come with him? And what about the threatening innuendos by the forger Kurt (played by Synonyms and Ahed's Knee director Nadav Lapid) about finding it exciting when women who pretend not to be afraid actually are afraid?

The juxtaposition of showing a woman who so carefully and artfully constructs every aspect of her life with the totally natural performances of the children, especially little Ninon, adds great dimension. Who do you want to be like, children ask themselves often. When that turns into whose life do you want? the story is another. As so often in cinema and literature, names can give you clues, about identity and desires, tactics and tact, unhappiness and longing.