Cast of the Mère Folle shoot in Netherlands

The cast of Mère Folle is a mix of professional and non-professional actors. In each location we are helped by a casting director.

Françoise Davoine as psychoanalyst

Françoise Davoine is an unusual psychoanalyst, and the author of the book Mère folle. She plays herself in her struggle to help patients the psychoanalytic establishment considers untreatable. For her, madness is generated by the rupture of social bonds, and treating it consists of restoring such bonds, through extreme identification to begin with. In the course of the film she moves from crisis to insight.

August Voskuil as Pierre

Pierre is a child confronting The Man, an artist/ex-patient of Dr Davoine whose way of life is alleged for the Doctor’s defense. Pierre is sometimes a respectful listener to The Man’s teachings, sometimes he attempts to take over the latter’s authority. He can be very naughty.

Lena Verhoeff as Pippa

Pippa is a six-year old girl who encounters The Man and is as savvy as her big brother Pierre in challenging the stranger to check his sanity.

Richard Wank as The Man

The Man, an ex-patient of Françoise, is alleged bfor the defence. He is a bit of many things: artist, philosopher, actor, and he competes with the children in follishness. Whether he is entirely "cured" remains undecidable. And so much the better...

Henri-Michel Yéré as Yvain

Henri-Michel Yéré plays Yvain, a patient severely traumatized, first by machismo and violence in his native country, then by hostility encountered upon arrival in France. He is a doctoral candidate in history at the University of Basel. His encounter with Françoise, here in the clip “Office Hours”, will be integrated in a series of such brief treatments.

Thomas Germaine as Artaud and as patient Antonin

Thomas Germaine plays Artaud. As Antonin he is a patient in the hospital, as Artaud he accompanies the 16th century writer la Boétie. During the trial he attempts to enlist Françoise in his theater of cruelty.

Mathieu Montanier as Fou 1

Mathieu Montanier is the reasonable, critical Fou 1. In his lean and tall appearance he is reminiscent of Don Quixote, in discourse he mediates between the late Middle Ages and the twenty-first century.

Louis de Villers as Fou 2

Louis de Villers is the smaller, versatile Fou 2. When rivaling with Fou 1 he seems a rather foolish and infantile younger brother. When donning a black jacket and a cigar, the likeness to Jacques Lacan is irrefutable. When with Fou 1, Sancho Pancho comes to mind.

Pitt de Grooth as Young Fool

Is he a fool or a patient? His ambiguity remains unresolved. In the courtyard he defends Mère Folle; in the Grande Salle he is depressed, and occasionally aggressive.

Marlene Dumas as Viviane

This autistic patient is unable to talk, hence to express her grief over Ariste’s death. When Françoise expresses identification with her, she sings her a nursery rhyme.

Kelly Ehrencron as Léonore

The fifteen-year old Léonore suffers from trans-generational traumatic stress disorder, and cannot keep her moods down. She alternates from extremely childish to adult behavior and believes she inherited her disease from her grandmother.

Catherine Lord as Alice

Feeling estranged from both her home and her hospital environments, Alice obsessively takes notes. She fails to understand why she is in the hospital.

Roben Mitchell van der Dungen Bille as Marcel

A patient suffering from Tourette syndrome, Marcel walks back and forth, muttering responses to his environment as well as childhood memories, and cannot refrain from touching other people.

Leticia Bal as Musical Nurse

When chaos breaks lose in the courtyard, this nurse calms the patients down with rhythm; when a patient becomes stressed, she soothes him with marimba music. Others are drawn out of depression, latent alcoholism, and hysteria by cheerful beats on a rack of bottles.

Olga Zuiderhoek as Head Nurse

Her attempts to restore order and chase the medieval fools out of the hospital grounds lead to comical scenes of crisis of authority. Between her whistle and the Musical Nurse’s music, they manage to calm things down – for the time being.

Paulina Aroch Fugellie as Mélusine

Just when Françoise goes to the director’s office to resign, she runs into Mélusine, happy as a clam, who tells her she goes home for good. This uplifting news makes it impossible for the analyst to resign, and instead she overcomes her reluctance and goes into the Grande Salle.

Ihab Saloul as Aziz

On a fatal day, this bright man had an ordinary knife in his pocket, and the next thing he knew, he was hospitalized for mental illness. He is nostalgic for his days as a psychology student.

Noa Roei as Woman in Black

Foreshadowing another woman in black, Morgue, in the half-way house, this enigmatic figure displays severe fits of anger, and alternates the telling of horror stories with friendly engagement and flirtatious behaviour.

Ania Dalecki as Engeline

This patient is caught up in memories of her father. She requests to be treated by a real therapist in a real office; she won’t be fooled.

Fleur Sulmont as Ariste

His death by overdose triggers the story. He keeps returning in conversations, memories, and dreams. The elusive Ariste seems the figuration of Françoise’s doubts.

Paul Faber as patient’s father

In a silent dance, the Young Fool attacks his father. Françoise witnesses their fight from a distance.

Mayura Subhedar as Folle

Françoise dreams of Ariste at the head of a group of fools. They gossip about her and spell out her mistakes. This Folle is one of them.

Reinier Schouten as Musical Fool 1

Roaming around the courtyard of the hospital with his buddy, this Fool turns out to play a mean number on his violin, parodying the Marseillaise just when Françoise defends the Republic.

Daan Binsbergen as Musical Fool 2

The musical collaboration between these two young musical fools sounds eerily beautiful in the garden where fools meet patients and the hospital world runs into a crisis of law and order.

Dominic van den Boogerd as director of Françoise’s hospital

This is the man who broke the news about Ariste’s death to Françoise. He doesn’t know what happened, and never will.