Tournées Film Festival: Mrs. Hyde

Thursday / March 5, 2020 / 7 p.m.
Landis Cinema, Buck Hall

This loose adaptation of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
transplants Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic tale to a high school in
a tough Paris suburb and infuses it with a surprising mix of B-movie
chills, dry humor, and contemporary reality. Isabelle Huppert stars as
the meek but devoted physics teacher Mme. Géquil, a helpless idealist
who undergoes an explosive transformation after being struck by
lightning in her makeshift lab. The ensuing drama confirms writer-director
Serge Bozon’s position as one of the most idiosyncratic talents
in the contemporary French cinema, a filmmaker one might describe
as a brilliant polymath whose fluency in classic film allows him to
elegantly juggle comedic and dramatic elements in service of a tone
that is uniquely his, both passionate and caustic, poetic and quotidian,
contemporary and in the tradition of the great genre pictures of the
past. While Mrs. Hyde provides an unflinching, at times uncomfortable
view of the challenges currently facing the French nation and its
school system, its most powerful aspect may lie in its earnest belief
in the power of education: indeed, this is a film that manages to turn a
geometry lesson into a thrilling, profoundly moving cinematic moment.

Free for all! No ticket required.

The Tournées Festival is made possible by the FACE Foundation, Africana Studies, the Departments of Foreign Languages & Literatures, Film & Media Studies, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and the International Student Association.