Hallucinatory character study that doesn't quite work
"Madeleine: Anatomy of a Nightmare" features Camille Keaton as an American living abroad in Italy with her older husband. She is traumatized by a miscarriage she's suffered, and is plagued by intense nightmares that seem to be related to the event. As expected, some psychological unraveling (or something like it) follows.
This little-seen psychological horror flick is really more of a chamber drama featuring various hallucinatory images that range from trite to genuinely creepy; these visuals manifest in dream sequences experienced by Keaton's character as she is romancing two different men (aside from her husband, who seems oddly unbothered by her affairs), and sometimes in brief intercuts that occur while her character is awake; in the latter instances, there is little context and the sequences appear to be random more than symbolic. It is this precise disjointedness that characterizes "Madeleine," though it's not a complete failure.
The film does manage to be engrossing even while the narrative feels oblique and arbitrary, and this is largely because the cinematography and visuals are more or less effective, and the film also functions as a time capsule of gaudy '70s European style. Keaton's performance is overwritten by bad dubbing, and, as is the case with most Italian horror fodder of this period, the dialogue feels disingenuous, sometimes absurd, and at times laughable.
Despite its shortcomings, the film does have a clever ending that is borderline-Hitchcockian, and I was caught off guard by it. Even still, "Madeleine: Anatomy of a Nightmare" does not quite work as well as it should. The meandering narrative punctuated by a number of LSD-esque visuals leaves the viewer wanting something a bit more, as none of the themes really coalesce. The conclusion, to some degree, acts as a cop-out to fill in the gaps that precede it. That being said, it is worth watching for fans of Camille Keaton, as well as anyone with a curiosity or interest in 1970s Italian psychological horror--it is certainly strange. 6/10.
This little-seen psychological horror flick is really more of a chamber drama featuring various hallucinatory images that range from trite to genuinely creepy; these visuals manifest in dream sequences experienced by Keaton's character as she is romancing two different men (aside from her husband, who seems oddly unbothered by her affairs), and sometimes in brief intercuts that occur while her character is awake; in the latter instances, there is little context and the sequences appear to be random more than symbolic. It is this precise disjointedness that characterizes "Madeleine," though it's not a complete failure.
The film does manage to be engrossing even while the narrative feels oblique and arbitrary, and this is largely because the cinematography and visuals are more or less effective, and the film also functions as a time capsule of gaudy '70s European style. Keaton's performance is overwritten by bad dubbing, and, as is the case with most Italian horror fodder of this period, the dialogue feels disingenuous, sometimes absurd, and at times laughable.
Despite its shortcomings, the film does have a clever ending that is borderline-Hitchcockian, and I was caught off guard by it. Even still, "Madeleine: Anatomy of a Nightmare" does not quite work as well as it should. The meandering narrative punctuated by a number of LSD-esque visuals leaves the viewer wanting something a bit more, as none of the themes really coalesce. The conclusion, to some degree, acts as a cop-out to fill in the gaps that precede it. That being said, it is worth watching for fans of Camille Keaton, as well as anyone with a curiosity or interest in 1970s Italian psychological horror--it is certainly strange. 6/10.
- drownsoda90
- Nov 6, 2021