'Augustine': Healer or a heel?

The plot outline of

Augustine

sounds like one of those medical mysteries you read about in the newspaper: A young woman reports to the hospital after suffering a seizure that leaves her unable to open her right eye. While being held for observation, she endures additional attacks that cause a lack of sensation on one side, temporary paralysis, and other strange, apparently neurological symptoms, including selective colorblindness and the inability to recognize certain scents through one nostril or the other.

One more thing: The seizures, some of which are deliberately induced by her doctor, under hypnosis, appear sexual in nature, accompanied by orgasmic writhing, moaning, and grasping of the breasts and crotch. It would make a fascinating case study, were it not for the fact that no conclusive diagnosis is identified.

The late-19th-century events depicted in this French drama are, for the most part, true. Its titular protagonist was a real teenage kitchen maid who became the patient of Jean-Martin Charcot, a pioneering physician sometimes called the father of modern neurology. This, despite his attributing Augustine's condition to "hysteria," a diagnosis once widely used to describe a panoply of "illnesses," including sexual desire.

But the film - fiercely yet faithfully imagined by first-time feature filmmaker Alice Winocour - is not exclusively a mystery. It's part love story, part horror story, as well as a parable of gender, power, and the enduring enigma that is the mind-body connection.

Throughout the film, which is otherwise a conventionally structured drama, Winocour includes documentarylike clips in which contemporary women describe symptoms similar to Augustine's, while dressed in period garb. Oddly, their stories, told directly to the camera, sound more like metaphysical experiences than interviews in a doctor's office.

The heart of the story concerns the relationship between the middle-aged, married Charcot (Vincent Lindon) and his much younger patient, played with mesmerizing intensity by the French singer Soko. What begins as a clinical relationship - in which Augustine's naked body is poked and prodded like a piece of meat - becomes something else entirely. But what exactly?

Augustine becomes, for Charcot, his star patient. The doctor parades her in front of an audience of his colleagues, putting her under for the medical community to observe and photograph her paroxysms. It's almost a kind of pornography.

But it's more than that, too. For Charcot, Augustine is a meal ticket, since he plans to show her off to the members of the Academy of Sciences in a plea for funding.

Augustine is neither deadpan historical drama, feminist screed, nor sentimental romance. Rather, it's a little of all three. In examining this sad story, Winocour tempers the pity we might ordinarily feel for Augustine - or, for that matter, our distaste for Charcot's methods - with a curiosity that is both genuine and generous.

Directed by Alice Winocour. With Vincent Lindon, Soko, and Chiara Mastroianni. In French with subtitles. Distributed by Music Box Films.

Running time: 1 hour, 41 mins.

Parent's guide: No MPAA rating (nudity, sex, disturbing medical treatment)

Playing at: Ritz BourseEndText