‘Madame’ Review: Smart French Debut Tackles Class, Culture

Laura (Malou Khebiz), a young French woman, takes a job as a personal assistant/cleaner/chef for Souria (Soundos Mosbah), the effectively incarcerated mistress of a Saudi prince (Kassem Al Khoja), in the smart, psychologically nuanced French drama Madame (Le Triangle d’Or).

A debut feature for director Hélène Rosselet-Ruiz, written in collaboration between Rosselet-Ruiz and Pauline Guéna, this was reportedly inspired by a very similar experience the director herself had working for a wealthy Gulf state family, although tweaks have been made to facilitate the drama. The often imperious behavior of the titular Souria, who is not allowed to leave her gilded cage of a mansion, and the conspicuous consumption she and her lover enjoy may seem outrageous, but the milieu is largely convincingly depicted — right down to the keeping of a miserable black panther in a closet enclosure, whom the prince’s factotum Emre (Ziad Bakri) has to drug daily lest it cry all day and night out of despair. All in all, the film offers a well-considered analysis of the class, gender and cultural dynamics inherent in the core situation that doesn’t preach or polemicize.  

The opening sequence shows a variety of women, including Laura, being interviewed for the assistant position by a recruiter, all of it filmed by low-resolution security cameras, a device deployed throughout, although thankfully not for the entire film. The security footage, with its date and time stamps and weird angles, acts as a reminder of the vigilance of the Saudi family who eventually hire Laura, shadowy figures who are mostly behind the cameras watching to ensure their employees and subjects like Souria are doing what they’re supposed to do.

In fact, there is a kind of fuzziness around whom Laura is meant to report to. She’s paid to be at Souria’s beck and call every moment of the day and often gets awakened at strange times in the night for errands, like going out to buy every item on a fast-food restaurant’s menu and bring it back for a midnight feast. At the same time, Palestinian employee Emre reminds Laura that its actually the sheikh who is paying her wages, and when Emre and the boss are off on trips (usually to visit the sheikh’s legal wife, whom we never meet), Laura’s job is to spy on Souria, making sure she never leaves, and to report on everything she does.  

Even so, Souria likes to pretend, if only to herself, that she’s in charge and she will often say abusive things to Laura, ridiculing her dress sense, embarrassingly scrutinizing her body, and reminding her in every way that she is a servant. Laura is not supposed to ever look the prince in the eyes when he’s there, and at one point early on she’s advised to never look more attractive than Souria, who has a very jealous streak, which is mostly directed at the prince’s legitimate wife. A little deluded and possibly driven a little crazy by the constant isolation of living in a harem of one, Souria is convinced that someday he will leave his wife and marry her and then everything will be coming up roses. Indeed, he sends a truckful of red roses one day to the house after a fight, but all they do is get in the way and slowly wilt.  

After Laura snaps one day and threatens to quit after Souria goes too far with her insults, the power shifts abruptly. Laura decides to stay when she sees Souria’s desperate reaction, literally beating herself up like a contrite child. Similarly, she grows closer to Emre, who has a heart underneath his veneer of cold professionalism and worries profoundly about his family back in Palestine, whom the sheikh has promised to help emigrate.

In a way, Laura has the least investment in the situation as she can walk away any time she wants and pursue her ambition to join the army, a goal she’s working toward by doing push-ups and pull-ups everyday in her tiny maid’s bedroom. She’s only there for the money, which is needed to help out her sister, who has a young daughter — although the longer Laura spends with these ultra-wealthy foreigners in their tower of gold, the less she can relate to her sister’s working-class Parisian friends, met on a rare night out to celebrate a birthday.

Guena and Rosselet-Ruiz’s deft script tracks the power shifts and realignments of sympathy in this claustrophobic environment with persuasive subtlety, although a near final scene where Laura, Souria and Emre all finally drop their rigid roles and get drunk together may seem a little abrupt to some. The homestretch of the drama, however, takes the story in a chilling direction, packing an aching quantity of feeling into a single glance at a security camera as someone climbs into a car and leaves the compound, never to be heard from again. For all the high tech and haute couture on display throughout, this feels much like a modern fairy tale, one warning young women against seeking love and riches that have hidden costs to the soul, deadly as a depressed panther in a cage.