Suggests: HFA Film Screening: Aloïse

Ararity by the unsung French-Polish director Liliane de Kermadec, Aloïse has long been overlooked in the pantheon of Seyrig’s greatest parts—perhaps because it premiered the same year as India Song and Jeanne Dielman. But as in Chantal Akerman’s film, Seyrig’s character in Aloïse represents a departure from her typically celestial roles. The film is a biopic of Aloïse Corbaz, a Swiss outsider artist forced to work as a governess before being diagnosed with schizophrenia and institutionalized for over four decades. In this revisionist drama—starring a fresh-faced Isabelle Huppert as the young Aloïse—Seyrig is transformed into the frail older version of Aloïse, a part she found greatly rewarding because it allowed her to depict female madness honestly and unsensationally; male directors, according to Seyrig, were often guilty of spectacularizing the conditions of similarly marginalized women. “I don’t really know what a madwoman is,” said Seyrig. “I only thought to play the part by acting out my reactions to the…