Hysteria, hysteria, is the name of a mental illness that has been abandoned, but for a long time before the nineteenth century, it was thought to be a female-only disease caused by uterine disturbances, and hysteria is often used to describe women who are out of control and act like crazy.
Classic "crazy women" in literature and film and television works emerge endlessly: Bertha who set fire in Jane Eyre, incestuous ripples in "Thunderstorm", Annie who was kidnapped in "Ten Days in Danger", Qiu Xia who was abandoned in "Mother Loves Me Again", and so on.
These dramatic figures, along with the mad women in the real world, are both the most popular gossip talkers and the most despised special groups, whose stories often end in insane asylum, and their fate is no longer a topic of concern.
The opposite is true of "The Mad Woman's Ball," a French film set in a nineteenth-century lunatic asylum that tells the struggle and escape of a young woman after being tricked into hospital, and performs a female version of the story of "flying over the madhouse."
Notice that "Crazy Woman's Ball", a new movie that is not very popular, is because of the name of its director and starring: Melanie Roland.
Anyone who has seen Quentin's film Shameless Bastard will certainly have a hard time forgetting the blonde woman leaning by the window smoking and reading, and in "The Mad Woman's Ball", Melanie's character Eugenie recreates this classic scene.
As an independent, intelligent, and avant-garde rich lady, Eugenie did not obey the discipline of women in that era, attending the funerals of the great literary hero Hugo, mocking the philosophical salons of men, ridiculing the desire of her peers for marriage and love, and wandering in the free and chaotic urban areas.
Worst of all, she claimed to be able to talk to the souls of the dead, all of which made her aristocratic father feel ashamed and disgusted.
Under the calculation of her family, Eugenie was tricked into a female lunatic asylum and forced to undergo a series of useless and painful "treatments" such as ice baths and confinement, and in a desperate situation, the female companions who were also "crazy" gave her the courage to support her.
Eugenie also gradually realized that these women, who were judged by the doctors to be crazy, were not crazy, and most of them were poor people who were forced into desperate situations and exiled by relatives and friends, and could only fend for themselves in the madhouse.
When she learned that the insane asylum was about to hold an annual ball and invite outsiders to attend, Eugenie had the idea of escaping, how could she escape from this desperate prison by hiding from the harsh doctors and nurses?
As a film based on a real historical background, "Crazy Woman's Ball" is remarkable in terms of serving the Road, the contrast between the doctor's black robe and the patient's white dress is sharp, and the light draws a gulf between light and darkness, giving the picture an oil painting-like texture and highlighting the oppressive atmosphere of the lunatic asylum.
The corset worn by the heroine and the two nurses in the film points directly to the theme: whether it is a stigmatized illness, an insane asylum, the suppression of everyone or the clothing of the body, its essence is a bondage for women.
This bondage runs through time and age, and women who are imprisoned in lunatic asylums cannot prove that they are conscious, just as salem's "witches" who were put on trial cannot be resurrected from the burning. But any woman who violates social norms will be thrown into a madhouse "crazy".
Compared to these women who have been judged to be insane, the two nurses in the madhouse are clearly normal women in the eyes of the public.
But ironically, their lives are also inseparable from madmen, one of whom becomes an accomplice of the doctor after experiencing the madness of his family, and proves his normality by persecuting the women who have been imprisoned; the other who has lost his sister finally believes in the existence of ghosts, helps Eugenie when she is desperate, and eventually replaces the fleeing other party as the next crazy woman.
The few rivalry scenes between the two but with an undercurrent also became a highlight of the film.
In the unanimous expectations of the actors and the moviegoers, the climax of the film, the madhouse ball, finally opens, which is a lively and strange scene: the well-dressed men come to dance with the crazy women in tattered costumes, their behavior seems elegant, but they can't hide the contempt in their eyes.
For them, dancing and watching deformity shows are no different from crazy people, they do not care about the lives and deaths of patients, nor do they care about the quality of treatment, in the small safe and reasonable space of the insane asylum, they can take off their disguises and release malice and animal lust, they are the real madmen at the dance.