Madame

When any person is given extreme power over another, there is a danger of abuse. Studies suggest that even those not normally prone to such impulses can find their morals distorted in such circumstances. Lounging on the couch with Prince Al-Saleh (Kassem Al Khoja), Souria (Soundos Mosbah) asks Laura (Malou Khebizi) to tell them something about herself. Where there is obvious discomfort, she prods and pushes for more, knowing that because she really needs her job, Laura cannot run away. In time to come, however, Laura will discover that she does have a power of her own – and that Souria has next to none.

Madame is based on director Hélène Rosselet-Ruiz’s own experiences. There are women like Souria hidden away in all the great cities of the world, and some of the more ordinary ones, but to catalogue their existence in any form other than fiction is beset with difficulties. The tropes that contribute to this are not as culturally specific as some imagine. Rosselet-Ruiz’s film premièred at Cannes, where women who style themselves lie Souria are celebrated. On the silver screen we see distinctly less of small, compact, muscular women like Laura, who has taken her service job to tide her over before she joins the army. And what girl has not, at some point, been told – if only through the stories presented to her in childhood – that she could live happily ever after if she married a handsome prince?

On the surface of it, Souria and her prince do seem to be in love. When he’s away from their Parisian home, she fixates on her phone, waiting for him to text. He, meanwhile, is at pains to make sure that she behaves in a manner he can approve of. There are cameras in every room of the house. His assistant, Emre (Ziad Bakri), bribes Laura and asks her to tell him everything that Souria does at these times. “Madame does not leave the house,” she has already been told. Instead, manicurists, couturiers, jewellers and the like come to visit, so that Souria can indulge expensive tastes. Beyond that, she has a gym, a swimming pool, the television. But she is bored – and, Laura gradually comes to realise, her whole existence is underscored by fear.

In Arabic, the name Souria refers to the brightness of sunlight. In French it suggests a little mouse. Madame’s insecurity is clear from the start, when Laura is told that she must never look prettier than her. Her pettiness comes across as an expression of her lack of power, a desperate desire to control what she can. Even when it gives way, she doesn’t empathise with Laura. She doesn’t imagine herself as capable of work. She casually makes a mess the way she casually abandons food, and she calls for assistance at all times of day or night without a second thought.

Laura applies herself, focused and pragmatic. She is constantly cleaning, serving meals, running errands. The effort involved in her daily existence, both physical and psychological, is skillfully realised. We also see her working out in her small basement room, or testing herself against Emre, whose initial dismissal of a woman’s capacity to be a soldier gives way to a supportive, fraternal kind of bond. He is the only person in the house who treats her like a human being, but he is focused on pleasing the prince; only slowly does the reason for this, and his great weight of private sorrow, emerge.

Everybody here – perhaps even the prince – feels like a prisoner on some level. For Laura, however, the nature of her oppression – that she is seen as less than human – gives her a degree of anonymity, and thus the prospect of escape, which she is shrewd enough to keep in sight as the tension escalates. Souria’s world is built up of shades of brown and gold. Laura wears cool colours which connect her to the world outside. She becomes a thread of reality to which Souria clings as her fantasy begins to fall apart.

Just as Laura anchors the story, Khebizi’s performance anchors the film. She brings a deliberateness to her character’s every action, giving her a sense of roundedness, of completeness, in stark contrast to her employers. The script gives us enough to understand Laura as having a life which extends beyond the screen, and beyond the unnaturalal environment of the house. She is more than just an entry point to someone else’s story. It is her act of bearing witness that gives definition to everything else, that makes it real.

Reviewed on: 27 May 2026