Two from Toronto: 'Mad Women's Ball' and the mixed-up 'Tammy Faye'
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| Director/star Laurent (right) faces off with de Laage. |
"The Mad Women's Ball," directed by and co-starring Melanie Laurent ("Breathe"), will stream only on Amazon Prime as a spellbinding period tale about the medical mistreatment of women and, oh, so much more.
Laurent portrays an administrative nurse at a 19th-century French sanitarium, where a few of the female inmates actually might need to be patients. Many, though, were dispatched there by men seeking to victimize them or by families who just didn't know how to cope.
Such is the case with the heroine of the piece (the strong Lou de Laage), whose scary talent of communicating with the dead gets her committed and then some in what feels like a grand-looking, distaff version of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." It also makes a fine Prime choice to become the streaming service's first original French-language film.
Not rated by MPAA (but with sexual situations and hospital nudity); 1:54; $ $ $ $ out of $5
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| Chastain gets her 'Eyes' on. |
Otherwise, the lengthy story of the Bakkers' rise and fall comes complete with too much sitcom-like dialogue and only a few intriguing relationships. Those would be the ones between Tammy Faye and her ever-disapproving mother (Cherry Jones), and Jim's constant fawning and kowtowing to fellow religious pitchman Jerry Falwell (Vincent D'Onofrio).
Hey, no surprise, but the brief, 2000 documentary of the same name really nailed it. This one should be labeled "for entertainment purposes only."
Rated "PG-13" by MPAA: sexual content and drug abuse; 2:06; $ $ and 1/2 out of $5
