Despite
her titular surname, the nocturnal alter-ego of Marie Géquil (sound it out) is
more like an impersonal, fiery monster in the tradition of the H-Man than a
down-and-dirty Victorian ripper. She doesn’t get a lot of breaks, but her
mutation still has transformative effects for her Jekyll persona in Serge Bozon’s
Mrs. Hyde, which screens as a Main
Slate selection of the 55th New York Film Festival.
For
most festival patrons, the casting of Isabelle Huppert as Madame Géquil is all
they need to know. The fact that it is also a loose reworking of Robert Louis
Stevenson is hopefully a bonus, but we are really talking loose here—like those
pants need a belt and suspenders, plus some gathers round the cuffs.
Despite
thirty years of experience, Madame Géquil finds herself on probation due to her
ineffectual classroom manner. Teaching physics in a distressed urban technical
school is not an easy task—and her openly hostile students do not make it any
easier. Unlike the hypocritically unctuous principal, she has no truck with the
soft bigotry of low expectations, but her refusal to dumb it down only
increases her class’s antipathy. Than one fateful day, while Madame Géquil is
performing an experiment, a lightning bolt from out of the blue strikes the
school’s laboratory (a refurbished shipping container).
Suddenly,
Madame Géquil has more confidence and appetite by day, but she sleepwalks by
night. Eventually, she starts transforming into a Human Torch like figure that preys
on the thugs running wild in the nearby projects. This two-pronged attack will
help her finally reach Malik, her worst tormentor in class, who turns out to
have an unsuspected aptitude for electrical engineering.
Although
there is a thimble full of genre business in Mrs. Hyde, it is more an educator’s trials and tribulations, much
in the tradition of The Class or Dangerous Minds, but it is darker and
more fatalistic. It also has Huppert, who is terrific. Everyone seems to think
she is playing against type here, but the truth is, you can see all the
too-quiet intensity and barely contained resentment she has always conveyed so
vividly. If you tipped her Géquil over, she might shatter.
As
Malik, Adda Senani is a natural who looks like he really attends Arthur Rimbaud
Technical School and hates every minute of it. He is a genuine discovery, but
Romain Duris’s outrageously flamboyant, bang-flipping turn as the serpentine
principal will really burn itself onto your corneas. Unfortunately, José Garcia’s
Pierre Géquil is rather lightweight and inconsequential.
