L’empathie pour les jeunes femmes rebelles dans Mais ne nous délivrez pas du mal (Joël Séria, 1971) et Le Bal des folles (Mélanie Laurent, 2021)

Half a century apart, two French films can be compared on the basis of their narrative argument, which consists in describing the rebellion of young women against forms of authority. Le Bal des folles (2021), by Mélanie Laurent, shows how a young bourgeois wanting to emancipate herself is locked in the Salpêtrière hospital by her own father. She is saved from Charcot’s asylum by a nurse, who gradually takes care of her. This film, characteristic of contemporary feminist claims, can be compared to Mais ne nous délivrez pas du mal, by Joël Séria (1971). It follows two teenage girls who commit increasingly illicit and dangerous acts in the name of Satan, until they commit suicide when they risk being imprisoned for murder. The consideration of the cultural and production context of these films, of their narrative processes and of their spectatorial reception make it possible to analyze their different empathetic strategies.

Keywords: empathy, identification, reception studies, historical background, narratology