SummaryA woman who is unfairly institutionalized at Paris asylum plots to escape with the help of one of its nurses. Based on the novel 'Le bal des folles' by Victoria Mas.
Directed By:Mélanie Laurent
Written By:Christophe Deslandes, Julien Decoin, Victoria Mas, Mélanie Laurent
The Mad Women's Ball
Metascore
Generally Favorable
72
User score
Generally Favorable
6.3
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Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
86% Positive
12 Reviews
12 Reviews
14% Mixed
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Sep 13, 2021
91
Laurent’s portrait of women pushed to the edge of society, exploited, and tortured for the sake of progress is uncompromising and fearless.
Sep 17, 2021
80
The director and star deftly juggles social commentary, genre tension, spookiness and some fabulous period costumes (courtesy of designer Maïra Ramedhan Levi).
User score
Generally Favorable
42% Positive
5 Ratings
5 Ratings
58% Mixed
7 Ratings
7 Ratings
0% Negative
0 Ratings
0 Ratings
Nov 21, 2024
10
Watching this film I realized how simple and natural the feelings between people are. From a smile, small touches of caress, to acts of free kindness. This film is extraordinary - it succeeds through impeccable direction, image and acting, to create a poetic image of the things that matter in life.
Jun 17, 2025
9
With this film, Melanie Laurent demonstrates her talent as both a filmmaker and an actress. Lou de Laage also gives an outstanding performance. One wonders why she doesn't get more attention and why she isn't featured in more productions. The film is haunting and a homage to strong women who refuse to submit and rebel in a patriarchal, male-dominated society. This film clearly shows that they often pay a high price for this (even today). It is authentically and intensely staged and unsparingly depicts the suffering of a strong woman. Even if a small mistake went unnoticed in one dialogue (Genevieve with her father), the film is well worth seeing and has a lasting impact.
Sep 12, 2021
80
Contrived and possibly overheated though the film might be at times, there is real storytelling gusto to it, and Laurent punches it across with relish.
Sep 12, 2021
75
The Mad Women’s Ball represents a noteworthy achievement for Laurent—a tremendously compelling, emotionally shattering period piece bearing at least three mighty performances from de Laâge, de Dietrich, and herself.
Sep 16, 2021
70
Laurent has made an elegant if overheated melodrama that amplifies the villainy of Charcot and his colleagues (one proves particularly appalling) to underscore how male-centered the medical establishment was — and is.
Sep 17, 2021
67
Laurent, an actress known Stateside for movies like Inglorious Basterds and Beginners, has adapted Ball from the bestselling novel by Victoria Mas, whose facts are rooted in actual history. She shares Mas' justifiable outrage at the casual inhumanity of it all — the brutal experiments and biased theories, the rampant physical and emotional abuse — and also her sense for melodrama.
Sep 13, 2021
50
The film capsizes in the absence of a compelling center for Mélanie Laurent to hang her directorial panache.
Oct 18, 2021
5
''Eugéne, what's happening?
Don't you see, Louise?
It's them
You're what's happening to her.
It's you!
You're doing it!
You're driving her mad!'' ''Shut her up.'' ''Oh, yes.
Shut me up, doctor!
Go on, shut me up!
Because I know everything!
I can tell you everything!
What you're doing to us... '' In my opinion, this film is trying to shed a light on the way women were treated in the face of the null understanding of mental illness in the 19th century.
Adding to the fact that institutionalizing them was something that was weaponized against them. Against ''difficult'' women. That's very good, you can certainly see the idea that this film has in mind to portray a certain female empowerment, but it surprises me that with so many women involved and even with a female director, the film fails to give it an approach that goes beyond the cruelty to which they were subjected. There's no depth. The events are simply reactionary, and even with the decent performances, there's barely anything more useful.
The hasty resolution of its climax is further evidence of this. Perhaps this film will increase Mélanie Laurent's credits as a filmmaker, but she was far from providing a real stage for her criticism and subject matter.
Oct 14, 2021
5
(Mauro Lanari)
Female version of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (Forman 1975), it's an impeccable attack on scientism, but spiritualism too would require new explanatory theories that Mélanie Laurent couldn't care less.
