THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – WE CAN AVOID
Emmanuelle goes to the family home to celebrate the birthday of her mother who lives with her other daughter, Nathalie. The latter turns out to be as lively as it is unpredictable, transforming each moment into a fragile representation, which can tip over into unease or conflict. Soon the mood deteriorates. We learn little by little that Nathalie suffers from schizophrenia and refuses treatment, while the film opts for the point of view of Emmanuelle torn between love and exasperation for her sister.
To insanity sticks to this minimal scenario, first concentrating on the sisterly relationship and then broadening towards the eternal motif of “family, I hate you” so dear to French naturalism. And although Audrey Estrougo, who signed Supremes (2021), the beautiful biopic on the rap group NTM, takes all the precautions to treat mental illness as fairly as possible by circumventing the clichés, To insanity quickly falls into the pitfall of the filmed scenario where the heaviness of the subject condemns the form to literalism.
Filming the family nucleus like a pressure cooker
To breathe a little drama into his quasi-camera, Estrougo has only one recourse: to film the family nucleus like a pressure cooker and always hysterize his scenes a little more – increasingly long and insurmountable disputes , exhausting for everyone, starting with the viewer. In a binary mode, the film alternates quarrels and reconciliations, to reach a compromise, “neither with you nor without you”, which we see coming from afar.
French film by Audrey Estrougo. With Virginie Van Robby, Lucie Debay, Anne Coesens (1 h 22). On the Web : www.damneddistribution.com/alafolie