Toronto Review: Mélanie Laurent’s ‘The Mad Women’s Ball’

Rose Park wears a chic black dress for the Saint Laurent Womenswear Spring/Summer 2022 Show as part of Paris Fashion Week on Tuesday (September 28) in Paris, France.

Guy Lodge Film CriticWhenever a film begins with a disclaimer asserting that the story you’re about to see is fictional — and furthermore, that what shall unfold on-screen “should not be considered a reflection of a reality” — it’s hard not to go in assuming the exact opposite.

The plot for “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” adapted from William Shakespeare’s classic play, is almost too familiar to waste space for explanation. Even so, the basic premise sees Lord Macbeth (Denzel Washington), a well-respected soldier, spurred by three witches’ prophecy and the aspirations of his wife, the Machiavellian Lady Macbeth (Frances McDormand), transfixed by an ambition for the Scottish crown.

Carl Dreyer film (Coen’s clearest stylistic influence for the severity of this adaptation).

French luxury house Saint Laurent will go completely fur free in its collections from next year, its parent company Kering said Friday.In a statement, Kering added that another of its houses, Italian menswear brand Brioni, will also stop using natural fur -- making the luxury giant that includes Gucci, Alexander McQueen, Balenciaga, Bottega Veneta completely fur free.Kering CEO Francois-Henri Pinault said that “going entirely fur free is just the right thing to do.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentLaurent Cantet, best known for “The Class,” his Cannes 2008’s Palme d’Or-winning film about a teacher and his racially-mixed students in an underprivileged Parisian suburb, highlights the cracks within French society in the thought-provoking “Arthur Rambo.” The film, which played at Toronto in the Platform section and is competing at San Sebastian, is inspired by the true story of Mehdi Meklat, a young man who grew up in a French project on the outskirt

A superfan dates his idol in Claire Simon’s I Want To Talk About Duras (Vous Ne Désirez Que Moi), premiering in the San Sebastian Film Festival’s Official Competition before screening at the New York Film Festival. Based on the transcript of an audio interview, the French language drama stars Swann Arlaud as Yann Andréa, a man 38 years younger than his novelist partner Marguerite Duras, whose screenplay for Hiroshima Mon Amour won her an Oscar nomination in 1959.

Someone cue up “Sunrise, Sunset.” One month after Melinda French Gates finalized the end of her marriage with Bill Gates, the 57-year-old philanthropist celebrated the start of another happy matrimony, that of her and Bill’s daughter, Jennifer Gates. In photos that Jennifer, 25, shared to her social media on Sept.

“My Son” is a gimmick in search of a movie. Co-writer/director Christian Carion (“Joyeux Noel”) adapts his own 2017 French film of the same name, which was unexpectedly dropped to Peacock after forgoing the theatrical or VOD route (it will also be on The Roku Channel in December, making this deal even stranger).

Met Gala livestream still unsure of whether the looks worn on the red carpet were in keeping with its theme. The occasion was purportedly all about celebrating American fashion, and yet, countless attendees arrived draped in pieces from parts all across the Atlantic.

Mélanie Laurent cast an assortment of different actresses with disabilities for her new film “The Mad Women’s Ball,” which is set inside a 19th century French psychiatric institution. Because the film is about how women in this time were frequently mistreated and misunderstood, she wanted to make sure her movie could celebrate these women.

Ian Bailey appeared on Virgin Media for The Big Interview with Colette Fitzpatrick, and viewers had quite strong views about how the whole thing went.

James Middleton, the younger brother of the Duchess of Cambridge Kate, married the love of his life over the weekend, but who exactly is the newest edition to the Middleton family?

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentMelanie Laurent, one of France’s most acclaimed actors-turned-filmmakers, has been having a banner 2021, headlining Alexandre Aja’s hit Netflix movie “Oxygene,” sitting on Spike Lee’s Cannes jury, and world premiering her sixth directorial effort “The Mad Women’s Ball” at Toronto.

In Annus Mirabilis, the English poet Philip Larkin wrote that sexual intercourse was invented in 1963. Life was thus never better, he concluded, than in that year. Those lines strayed into my mind watching L’Événement (Happening), about a student in provincial France named Anne (Anamaria Vartolomei) who realizes she is pregnant during the countdown to her final examinations.

Work eats our lives. For nine, 10 hours a day — often more — we are either at work, traveling to work or catching up on work at home. Yet, for whatever reason, the process and patina of working life is rarely the subject of cinema. Except in the films of Stéphane Brizé, the French director who has made the workplace his stomping ground.

Everyone has their own truth, as they say, but some of those truths are considerably truer than others. Old pals Matt Damon and Ben Affleck join forces with established indie filmmaker Nicole Holofcener to adapt a true story – that of Marguerite de Carrouges, a 14th century French noblewoman who was raped by an old friend of her husband’s – and tell it from three different angles in Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel.

Addie Morfoot ContributorNational Geographic first approached Liz Garbus at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival about directing a documentary focused on French sea explorer Jacques Cousteau. Garbus, who grew up watching David Wolper’s ABC series “The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau,” was intrigued.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticRidley Scott’s “The Last Duel” is set in France in the late 1300s, and after a clangingly violent early battle scene, as well as a flashforward to the title duel, in which a pair of sworn rivals in heavy armor come at each other on horseback, each brandishing his lance a lot (sorry, I couldn’t resist), the film looks like it might be a swords-and-blood-in-the-mud movie: one of those flashy brutal period spectaculars which Scott, the director of “Gladiator,”