‘The Mad Women’s Ball’ explores a dark era of medical history

Editor’s Note: Keeping you in the know, Culture Queue is an ongoing series of recommendations for timely books to read, films to watch and podcasts and music to listen to. The French Amazon original feature “The Mad Women’s Ball,” which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and is out on Amazon Prime today, is the latest addition to the canon. One of the movie’s most overt displays of this dehumanization – the “Mad Women’s Ball” – is based on an actual event where, for one night only, the upper echelons of French society were invited to gawk at the clinic’s residents dressed up in their finery. Scenes focusing on the female patients’ experience of the patriarchal institution and its dystopian system of oppression are among the production’s sharpest and most enraging – and an uncomfortable reminder of how our culture has long demonized the “hysterical woman.” But “The Mad Women’s Ball” also triggers a different kind of ethical negotiation for the viewer. Add to Queue: Female hysteria in focus WATCH: “Augustine” It’s the same setting – the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital – but a different take on Dr. Charcot and his experimental methods to “cure” women.