Mademoiselle Paradis

Vienna in the eighteenth century. Maria Theresia von Paradis lost her sight as a small child and is an extraordinary pianist. Her family places her in the care of Doctor Mesmer, whose method, called magnetism, gradually restores her vision. But as she begins to see, her playing falls apart. A choice has to be made, and it is not she who makes it. Barbara Albert adapted Alissa Walser's novel. The story is real: Mesmer's treatment was disputed, the young woman was eventually removed from his care, and he was accused of being a fraud. The film refuses to treat blindness as a deficiency; what it fixes on is how other people made decisions about a woman's body. Maria Dragus plays the lead.