Madeleine Collins

Virginie Efira unravels in Madeleine Collins

Antoine Barraud's Madeleine Collins is a mildly engaging psychodrama about a woman attempting to juggle two households in separate countries. In France, Judith is wife to a conductor and they are raising two boys. In Switzerland, under the name of Margot, she plays house with a man who we eventually learn was married to her sister and his young daughter. Judith works as a translator, so she is able to use the travel necessary for her job as cover for her clandestine relationship. Her brother in law knows about her husband, but not vice versa. Most riffs on this theme, like The Bigamist or The Captain's Paradise, have had male protagonists, but no matter the gender, the focus of the narrative naturally concerns the unraveling of the protagonist's double life and Madeleine Collins is no exception.

Some have embraced this film as a Hitchcockian thriller, but Barraud is no Hitchcock. Barraud tries to give the film a subjective focus so we can empathize with his protagonist as her world collapses around her, but his directorial personality is not forceful enough to paper over the plot's improbabilities. However, he is fortunate enough in having a leading lady with enough personality and charisma to hold the film's flimsy framework together. Virginie Efira is originally from Belgium where she first found work on television as what they call on the continent a presenter. Her stunning beauty gave her access to film work, but it is her acting chops which has led her to become a significant leading lady in the French cinema during the past decade. She is best known in this country as the lead in Paul Verhoeven's Benedetta. Her sensuality in Madeleine Collins makes it believable that the male leads in the cast are in thrall to her, the most interesting being Nadav Lapid's forger. More importantly, Efira captures her character's hubris which precipitates her fall. Madeleine Collins could have been a film of shattering intensity. That it hold one's attention is mostly due to Ms. Efira efforts.