Q&A: Mélanie Laurent on Her Love of Directing And Actresses
Mélanie Laurent attends the red carpet of the movie "The Last Duel" during the 78th Venice International Film Festival on September 10, 2021 in Venice, Italy.
Photographer: Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images Europe(AP) -- Over the past decade, Mélanie Laurent has established herself as an accomplished film director. Yet four features and many accolades later, that fact may come as a surprise to many in the U.S. who still know her best for her acting — especially for playing Shosanna in “Inglorious Basterds.”
But that’s poised to change soon. Her latest film, an adaptation of Victoria Mas’ 2019 novel “The Mad Women’s Ball,” is being made more widely available than any of her previous films, thanks to the reach of Amazon Prime Video. The film takes audiences inside Paris’s Pitié-Salpêtrière asylum in 1885, where the spirited Eugénie (Lou de Laâge) is sent by her father.