La chambre des magiciennes (2000) (TV)

User Rating:

6.7/10   

Director:

Claude Miller

Writers:

Claude Miller (scenario & adaptation)
Siri Hustvedt (novel)

Release Date:

26 May 2000 (France)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama

Plot Keywords:

Dementia | Neurology | Migraine | Thirty Something | Roommate

Awards:

1 win & 1 nomination

Cast

Anne Brochet	...	Claire
Mathilde Seigner	...	Odette
Annie Noël	...	Eléonore
Yves Jacques	...	Dr. Fish
Edouard Baer	...	Simon
Jacques Mauclair	...	Eléonore's Husband
Edith Scob	...	Claire's Mother
Marc Cennelier	...	Claire's Father
Samantha Rénier	...	Marie
Virginie Emane	...	Patricia
Josselin Siassia	...	Limoges (as Jocelyn Siassia)
Béatrice Nzaou Niambi	...	Fatou
Valérie Bettencourt	...	Cop
Philippe Laudenbach	...	Old Doctor
Julien Boivent	...	Julien

Also Known As:

Of Woman and Magic (International: English title)

Runtime:

80 min

Country:

France

Language:

French

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

Switzerland:14 (canton of Geneva) | Switzerland:14 (canton of Vaud)

Company:

Arte France

Miller in fine form

Claude Miller, working this time in digital film, has made another superb study of a young woman under great pressure (mainly self-applied) who manages to work through her trauma. After the Charlotte Gainsbourg films of the 80's, and the wonderful L'Accompagnatrice with Romane Bohringer, he's looking at burnout in a thirty-year-old anthropology student who has a break down just days before the oral defence of her thesis. Claire is stubborn, sarcastic with everyone, and doubting her academic vocation.

In a hospital room with two other women, one of them a very disturbed elderly woman given to nocturnal wanderings that tie the staff in knots, she comes to understand something of herself, why she fights with her parents, why she's in a no-win relationship with a married man, why her studies of African myth and symbol are going nowhere. The digital camera in the cramped room is used very effectively to maintain a claustrophobic mood.