'Madeleine Collins': Virginie Efira Anchors Satisfying but Simplistic Drama

Beginning with a dizzying one-shot that follows Judith – or is it Margot? – around a high-end clothing store before a fainting spell upends her shopping trip, Antoine Barraud’s “Madeleine Collins” is a laser-focused character study that literalizes a double-life, following Judith (a calculated Virginie Efira) as she attempts to balance seemingly having two husbands, two sets of children, two complete lives. Wisely withholding key information about how Judith came into this situation until the very end, Barraud’s film effectively grafts the tropes of Hitchcockian thriller onto a domestic portrait of a woman’s life spiraling out of control. With a committed, and reserved, performance by Efira at the center, “Madeleine Collins” – a title that only makes sense in hindsight – highlights the pull of living out various lives, only to underline the sheer amount of stress that comes with trying to juggle multiple selves.

Juxtaposing her two radically different domestic situations, Barraud, who collaborated with Héléna Klotz on the script, begins with her working-class life in Geneva, where she lives with Abdel (Quim Gutiérrez) and her daughter. Living out of a small flat, as Abdel searches for a job, Judith works as a government translator, often having to leave on “trips” abroad. Yet these trips are merely a disguise for her second life in France, where she is married to the rising-star conductor Melvil (Bruno Salmone). In this life, she’s the well-to-do wife, raising two children and supporting her husband as he rises through the ranks. However, these constraint trips back and forth are not only getting the attention of Melvil and their brooding teenage son (Thomas Gloria), but causing Abdel to try to distance himself, and their daughter, from Judith, as she is increasingly unable to compartmentalize her dual lives.

Further complicating these binaries is the fact that Melvil and Abdel seemingly know of each other, if not the full truth of Judith’s deception. Unhurried, Barraud slowly teases out the complex relationship knots that initially formed the awkward trio, eventually focusing on Judith’s parents and their own relationship with Abdel. By playing up the mystery, complete with a sketchy forger (Nadav Lapid) who helps Judith create documents to live out these lives, “Madeleine Collins” brings up interesting questions about the nature of identity and the ability of Judith, among others, to live out differing lives in parallel. Yet, the film is also enamored with its own knotty construction, propelling towards an explanation that is both immensely satisfying but also simplistic in its implications for the life that Judith has chosen to live.

Left unexplored are Judith’s movements across both national and class boundaries, as she code-switches between Swiss and French and working and upper-class, raising two very different types of children in the process. Yet these binaries are, often, treated as window dressing, as Barraud is much more interested in doling out hints about the reasons behind Judith’s lifestyle than any thematic exploration of how these lives compare and contrast with each other.

At the center of all this is Efira, who plays Judith as both a chameleon and someone very out of her depth, frantically trying to balance the familial duties of two different husbands and children. Yet when everything starts spiraling, her dual lives begin overlapping as friends from one relationship see her with her other family. As she becomes increasingly desperate, trying to balance both, Efira showcases a nervy panic, unaware of what choice to make as her worlds start crumbling. As her two husbands, Salmone and Benguerel act as foils, if not fully-developed characters, as they, and the children, are a bit too schematic to be completely rounded.

While “Madeleine Collins” may not completely realize its thematic potential, it is nevertheless a deft portrait of a woman struggling to keep the status quo in order. With a nuanced performance by Efira at the center, Barraud’s film is tightly constructed and buoyed by a complex mystery that, thankfully, has a payoff equal to the build-up. [B]

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