Bertrand Bonello has been directing features for almost 20 years and has yet to make a clear breakthrough with the U.S. art-house scene. When I say his last two films, House of Pleasures and Saint Laurent, came close enough, I really mean “actually had U.S. distribution”; box-office-wise, though, they didn’t seem to make a splash. This is all the more unfortunate when Bonello strikes me as one of the most interesting directors of his generation, and, regardless of categorization, probably one of the best working today, my thoughts on which are evidenced by naming Saint Laurent the best film of 2015.
Perhaps proper notices awaited Madeleine Among the Dead, a Vertigo riff that, not unlike last year’s Phoenix (itself a sleeper hit), would rework the story from the woman’s perspective – but in a more literal homage, as we can see in a nine-and-a-half-minute sequences posted to Le CiNéMA Club. (For reference: this piece was originally composed for another film, Le Dos Rouge, in which he starred.) It, along with the site’s description, allows one to get some feeling for how the project might play in perspective and narrative, which does nothing to mend a broken heart. Bonello’s story would commence “six months before it begins in Vertigo — just at the moment when Gavin Elster, Madeleine Elster’s husband, trains Judy Barton to look and act like his wife, as part of his plan to make Scottie fall in love with her.” The depths of Madeleine‘s possible impact as both a standalone film and Hitchcock counterpart are deep, and Universal holding it up on account of rights is an absolute shame. I pray this isn’t all we’ll ever see of it.
At least Bonello’s next feature, Nocturama, opened today in France after — as well as, I expect, before — some controversy over its material, being that now is not the best timing for a movie about radicalized Parisian teens who blow up several parts of their city. Let’s thank international releases’ amorphous landscape for the fact that its soundtrack, featuring the helmer’s moody synth compositions alongside a couple of surprise needle drops, is now streaming on various platforms.
Click the link to watch Madeleine Among the Dead, hear the soundtrack below, and check back in September for our review of Nocturama: