Madame 2019

The Madame in Stéphane Riethauser's documentary is Caroline, an elderly lady with a coquettish hairstyle, elaborately bourgeois mannerisms and so much more. And oh, she's also the director's grandmother - a connection leading driving this double self-portrait in which a matriarch and her gay grandson confide in each other about their values and their views about their wildly disparate lives. Laced with subversive humour but steeped in profound reflections about the two protagonists' existence, the film deconstructs gender stereotypes and illustrates the saga of a middle-class family with archived pictures of the past and articulate conversations unfolding in the here and now.