Madame is Stéphane Riethauser's first feature and covers family film footage and photos over three generations, the two central interests being Stéphane's relationship with his grandmother Caroline, and his realisation that he is gay.
The family is a wealthy Swiss one, Stéphane growing with his parents in Geneva, although is it apparent that he has always related far more to his late grandmother, who died fifteen minutes before the film was made. Caroline detests convention: her first marriage was more of less a forced one in her mid-teens, she considers that her husband raped her, and she soon divorced him. She became a business woman, trying a few different kinds of business before owning a top restaurant. She married a second time but this too ended in divorce, and she was wary of men being after her for her money. She was the second moman to have a driving licence, and she had a large villa on the Côte d’Azur.
We learn of Stéphane growing up much impressed by reading Le Prince Éric by Serge Dalens, in which he associates one of the characters from his school with the hero. He develops a heterosexual alter ego, Riton, who does all the 'masculine' things that men do, he becomes friends with one of the less savoury young men in the area, smokes cannabis with him, but breaks with him when he is for a joke locked him in with a much older man who tries to molest him. Stéphane has a girlfriend with whom he has sex, but there's still something missing.
Listening to Charles Aznavour's song 'Ils disent' — a song about a gay transvestite — is something of an epiphanic moment, Stéphane working strongly towards the realisation of the fact that he's a homosexual. And then the inevitable coming out, which is of course saying at the same time that there will be no children. Caroline is at first slow to register the news, although she becomes a huge supporter of the gay cause, further cementing the relationship between the two. A joy to watch.
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