19-year-old kitchen maid Augustine suffers a grand mal seizure and is diagnosed with hysteria. She is committed to the Salpêtrière hospital, where ambitious physician Charlot takes special interest in her. Trying to raise funding, he trains her for a lecture-hall display of her maladies for other doctors and the press. As the day for their big demonstration draws closer, the object of his studies becomes the object of his desire, and the incarcerated Augustine comes to realize that she too has some power.
Alice Winocour’s feature film debut is a historical drama, set at the beginning of modern neurology and psychology. Free from archaic dialogue and the usual stuffiness of costume dramas, it paints Belle Époque Paris with an exquisite palette of shadowy-dim interiors and misty gray and damp green exteriors. It is a sensual, fiercely intelligent tale of female sexual awakening, desire and power, that make for a story of suppressed sexual tension gripping the viewer from start to finish.
FREDRIK MRAS
- Title
- Augustine
- Director
- Alice Winocour
- Country
- France
- Length
- 101 min
- Festival
- 2012
- Section
- Competition
- Language
- French
- Subtitle
- English
- Premiere status
- Nordic Premiere
- Production year
- 2012
- Cast
- Vincent Lindon, Soko, Chiara Mastroianni,
- Producer
- Isabelle Madelaine, Emilie Tisné
- Script
- Alice Winocour
- Music
- Jocelyn Pook
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