Le Bal des actrices (2009)
Directed by Maïwenn

Film Review

What is an actress?  What motivates her?  What frustrates her?  What is it that makes someone want to get up and parade in front of an audience, baring her soul as she does so?  These are some of the questions that actress-turned-director Maïwenn sets out to explore in this totally off-the-wall mockumentary, aided and abetted by an ensemble of female acting talent of truly mouth-watering proportions.  Following in the footsteps of her sister Isild Le Besco, Maïwenn appears determined to make a name for herself as a maverick filmmaker, having had a successful career as an actress.  Her first feature Pardonnez-moi (2006), a similar documentary-style comedy, was well-received by the critics, and her subsequent two films, Le Bal des actrices and Polisse (2011), have established her as one of France's most respected and popular female filmmakers.  By now you might have thought that the mockumentary was an overused and tired genre, but Maïwenn takes the well-worn format and gives it a whole new spin.  Her fake documentary is fun, feisty and frivolous, but it must surely rate as cinema's most insightful and poignant exploration of the actress's psyche since Joseph L. Mankiewicz's All About Eve (1950).

As in her first film, Maïwenn takes the central role, playing a rather touching caricature of herself as a naïve young filmmaker who see herself as the next Sofia Coppola (God help us).  Her character is determined to make an original artistic statement and hits on the idea of making a documentary about famous actresses in the form of a musical comedy.  (Pause for comic effect.)  As she sets out, armed with her trusty digital camera, she barges her way carelessly into the lives of a dozen or so struggling actresses, cajoling and flattering shamelessly to get them to agree to appear in her film.  Inevitably, the film is less about actresses in general and more about Maïwenn herself.  There is some truth in the statement that every picture an artist paints is a self-portrait - Maïwenn's film turns out to be a mordant reflection of its director's own complex inner life.

By allowing her actors to improvise many of their scenes, Maïwenn achieves a film that is shockingly true-to-life in places, and it is hard to know where the fiction ends and reality takes over.  Many of the distinguished actors who were roped into this mad venture are clearly enjoying sending themselves up, especially Karin Viard, who gives the film its funniest moments as a temperamental star who is willing to sacrifice her family in order to make a career in America.  The best sequence is the one in which the director Bertrand Blier fails to get Viard to work with an equally stubborn cow (of the farmyard variety).   Blier, you may recall, was the director who attempted a similarly themed film, Les Acteurs  (2000), far less successfully.  Another highpoint is Charlotte Rampling performing an utterly weird rap number sung by Joey Starr (Maïwenn's desperate attempt to widen Rampling's repertoire a little) - this is just one of several insanely kitsch musical numbers that somehow get spliced into the chaotic narrative.  Welcome to the Twilight Zone.

It isn't all fun and laughter, however.  Between the bursts of outright farce there are some more serious passages which give an insight into the darker realities of the life of an actress.   Romane Bohringer is convinced that she is over the hill, Jeanne Balibar looks as if she is ready to throw herself into the Seine, and Marina Foïs and Muriel Robin find themselves the victims of the actors' curse - typecasting.  The film's portrayal of actresses is far from flattering - most of them come across as egocentric, manipulative and self-pitying neurotics - yet somehow we admire them for their tenacity and dedication to their art.  An actors' life is not an easy one, and it is hard to imagine a more precarious profession than one in which the volatile whims of producers and audiences can decide whether you dine out at the Tour d'Argent or the local soup kitchen.  Maïwenn's film may be as light and fluffy as a weight-watcher's lemon soufflé, but it gets to the heart of its subject as vigorously as a Ken Loach social realist drama and reveals far more about the tormented inner life of the actress than any film so far.  Le Bal des actrices is entertaining, flighty and ever so slightly unhinged, but it is also extraordinarily true to life, and at times profoundly moving.  Actors really are a breed apart, actresses even more so.

Film Synopsis

An enterprising young film director, Maïwenn, decides to make a documentary about actresses.  She meets a number of diverse women who have chosen to make the dramatic art their career and becomes increasingly fascinated by their complex lives and personalities.  The women she encounters are all so different and yet they have one thing in common: a compulsive need to express their most intimate feelings in front of an audience.  As Maïwenn interviews her actresses and films them as they go about their business, she makes some startling discoveries...