“Madeleine Collins” is not Virginie Efira’s greatest success, but it is undoubtedly one of her greatest roles. In the shoes of a character with multiple identities, the actress sublimates this very high-level psychological thriller, with the ultimate revelation as beautiful as it is heartbreaking. (SPOILERS)
A great psychological thriller for Virginie Efira
Released at the end of 2021 after a presentation at the 78th Venice Film Festival, the dizzying psychological thriller Madeleine Collins allows Virginie Efira to add a very big new role to her filmography. Under the direction of Antoine Barraud, she embodies a woman with a double identity.
On the one hand, she is Judith Fauvet, wife of Melvil Fauvet (Bruno Salomone). She is a conference interpreter, he is a conductor. They live in France and have two children. On the other, she is the companion of Abdel Soriano (Quim Gutiérrez). They are settled in Switzerland, where they have a little girl, Ninon Loise Benguerel(). On the pretext of (false) business trips, she goes from one life to anotherwhile maintaining a seal between the two.
At the origin of this mysterious double life, there is a drama. The film Madeleine Collins indeed opens with a serious accident, the malaise and the fall of a young woman in a department store. We will come back to this only late in the film, in the last part where Judith’s dual identity is fully updated. There is something of Hitchcock in Antoine Barraud’s film, in Virginie Efira’s blondness and profound confusion, as well as in her multiple identity. Both guilty and victim of her own machination, she sets herself a trap which therefore closes violently in a panting third act.
Too much love and sorrow
To approach the heart of the plot of Madeleine Collins, you should know that the mother-daughter relationship between little Ninon and Judith is not authentic. That if on the one hand she is indeed the wife of Melvil Fauvet and mother of their two children, his life with Abdel and Ninon is more complex, even if infinitely bathed in love and tenderness. Indeed, the home formed by Judith, Abdel and Ninon has something artificial about it, Judith and Abdel being united by the loss of a person who was very dear to them.
Gradually overwhelmed by her two identities, as the suspicions around her grow stronger, she will have to confront her loved ones. If a terrible grief threatened to drown her, the immeasurable love for others kept her head above water. But she has gone too far, and it seems impossible to go back. She will then have a crazy gesture and run away with Ninon, “her” daughter. (Warning, the following contains SPOILERS)
The end of Judith Fauvet, the beginning of Madeleine Collins
For a long time very mysterious, Madeleine Collins subtly leaves the doubt: who is really Judith for Abdel and Ninon ? Why does she act this way? The intervention of Judith’s parents accelerates the infernal mechanism and precipitates the revelation: Judith had a sister, Margot, this young woman who dies in the introduction to the film, and who is Abdel’s wife and Ninon’s mother. At this time, Ninon is only a baby. Overwhelmed as if intoxicated by grief, Abdel and Judith will then develop a relationship. And in the eyes of Ninon, Judith naturally becomes his mother.
Taken in this headlong rush, thinking to protect Ninon from the death of her mother, Judith will therefore play the game for several years, until this double life becomes impossible to sustain.
The end of Madeleine Collins is brilliant because it is terrifying, Virginie Efira perfectly embodying the psychological distress that leads her to commit – almost – irreparable harm. Her double identity revealed, she announces to Melvil that she is leaving him, to stay with Abdel and Ninon. But Abdel pushes her away, preferring to stop everything. So Judith kidnaps Ninon and runs away with her. At that moment, Judith sank into a madness from which we do not expect to see her return.
Ninon, key to the resolution of Madeleine Collins
But Ninon, despite his young age, somehow understood that Judith was not his mother. And that’s what she shouts in his face, during their flight. This little girl affirmation will do the effect of an electric shock to Judith. Because she instantly understands that Ninon knows the reality, she no longer has to play her role as surrogate mother, she doesn’t have to live this double life anymore. And for Ninon to be able to grow other than in a lie, she has to get out of her life. She then goes the opposite way and brings Ninon back to Abdel.
Alone, Judith can no longer…
