Laura (Malou Khebiz), a young French woman, takes a job as a personal assistant/cleaner/chef for Souria (Soundos Mosbah), the effectively incarcerated mistress of a Saudi prince (Kassem Al Khoja), in the smart, psychologically nuanced French drama Madame (Le Triangle d’Or).

A debut feature for director Hélène Rosselet-Ruiz, written in collaboration between Rosselet-Ruiz and Pauline Guéna, this was reportedly inspired by a very similar experience the director herself had working for a wealthy Gulf state family, although tweaks have been made to facilitate the drama. The often imperious behavior of the titular Souria, who is not allowed to leave her gilded cage of a mansion, and the conspicuous consumption she and her lover enjoy may seem outrageous, but the milieu is largely convincingly depicted — right down to the keeping of a miserable black panther in a closet enclosure, whom the prince’s factotum Emre (Ziad Bakri) has to drug daily lest it cry all day and night out of despair. All in all, the film offers a well-considered analysis of the class, gender and cultural dynamics inherent in the core situation that doesn’t preach or polemicize.  

The opening sequence shows a variety of women, including Laura, being interviewed for the assistant position by a recruiter, all of it filmed by low-resolution security cameras, a device deployed throughout, although thankfully not for the entire film. The security footage, with its date and time stamps and weird angles, acts as a reminder of the vigilance of the Saudi family who eventually hire Laura, shadowy figures who are mostly behind the cameras watching to ensure their employees and subjects like Souria are doing what they’re supposed to do.

In fact, there is a kind of fuzziness around whom Laura is meant to report to. She’s paid to be at Souria’s beck and call every moment of the day and often gets awakened at strange times in the night for errands, like going out to buy every item on a fast-food restaurant’s menu and bring it back for a midnight feast. At the same time, Palestinian employee Emre reminds Laura that its actually the sheikh who is paying her wages, and when Emre and the boss are off on trips (usually to visit the sheikh’s legal wife, whom we never meet), Laura’s job is to spy on Souria, making sure she never leaves, and to report on everything she does.  

Even so, Souria likes to pretend, if only to herself, that she’s in charge and she will often say abusive things to Laura, ridiculing her dress sense, embarrassingly scrutinizing her body, and reminding her in every way that she is a servant. Laura is not supposed to ever look the prince in the eyes when he’s there, and at one point early on she’s advised to never look more attractive than Souria, who has a very jealous streak, which is mostly directed at the prince’s legitimate wife. A little deluded and possibly driven a little crazy by the constant isolation of living in a harem of one, Souria is convinced that someday he will leave his wife and marry her and then everything will be coming up roses. Indeed, he sends a truckful of red roses one day to the house after a fight, but all they do is get in the way and slowly wilt.  

After Laura snaps one day and threatens to quit after Souria goes too far with her insults, the power shifts abruptly. Laura decides to stay when she sees Souria’s desperate reaction, literally beating herself up like a contrite child. Similarly, she grows closer to Emre, who has a heart underneath his veneer of cold professionalism and worries profoundly about his family back in Palestine, whom the sheikh has promised to help emigrate.

In a way, Laura has the least investment in the situation as she can walk away any time she wants and pursue her ambition to join the army, a goal she’s working toward by doing push-ups and pull-ups everyday in her tiny maid’s bedroom. She’s only there for the money, which is needed to help out her sister, who has a young daughter — although the longer Laura spends with these ultra-wealthy foreigners in their tower of gold, the less she can relate to her sister’s working-class Parisian friends, met on a rare night out to celebrate a birthday.

Guena and Rosselet-Ruiz’s deft script tracks the power shifts and realignments of sympathy in this claustrophobic environment with persuasive subtlety, although a near final scene where Laura, Souria and Emre all finally drop their rigid roles and get drunk together may seem a little abrupt to some. The homestretch of the drama, however, takes the story in a chilling direction, packing an aching quantity of feeling into a single glance at a security camera as someone climbs into a car and leaves the compound, never to be heard from again. For all the high tech and haute couture on display throughout, this feels much like a modern fairy tale, one warning young women against seeking love and riches that have hidden costs to the soul, deadly as a depressed panther in a cage.

Watch Obsession in theaters now (and rewatch on digital later)

Curry Barker is the writer and director of Obsession, which he also edited himself. On board as associate producer is Cooper Tomlinson with Jason Blum as executive producer. Curry Barker and Cooper Tomlinson also have the YouTube channel “That’s a Bad Idea”, which is full of amazing shorts.

Also, they made the amazing horror-comedy movie Milk & Serial, which I highly recommend checking out. You can watch it for free on their YouTube channel.

Admittedly, I cannot even read the title of Obsession without hearing the Army of Lovers song with the same title in my mind. In fact, I am writing this review with that song on repeat (anything else would be madness to me). Oh yeah, one might even say that I am obsessed.

And yes, this movie has already had a similar impact on me, so I cannot wait to watch it again.

In any case, I would highly recommend watching it in the theater as well. The impact of a dark theater with gorgeous sound delivers a solid impact with Obsession. And then, of course, you’ll want to rewatch it when the unrated version comes out on VOD.

Oh yes, “unrated”… a terrifying thought. I can’t wait!

OBSESSION is out only in theaters where it premiered on May 15, 2026. Rumor has it that it will be out on VOD in early June 2026.

Sonny Rollins, a sublime tenor saxophonist and one of the last iconic figures of the golden age of post-World War II jazz, died Monday at his home in Woodstock, N.Y. Diagnosed years ago with pulmonary fibrosis, he was 95. His death was announced on his website.

Rollins survived virtually all of his contemporaries from the 1950s and ’60s, the period in which the fundamental elements of the contemporary jazz that followed for the next half-century were established. Among his peers were musicians such as Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley and J.J. Johnson.

His long, productive career encompassed more than six decades, in each of which his live performances and recordings continually attested to his preeminence as one of jazz history’s most vital, innovative and influential artists.

“Rollins has an original jazz voice,” critic Zan Stewart wrote in The Times in 1990, “rooted in the bebop mode, but a voice that has evolved over time, incorporating other styles and other forms as they fit that voice.”

His magisterial presence was a constant in his performances, from the time he was in his 20s into his later years. A commanding figure at 6 feet 2, he played with a sound and an articulation to match his visual image. His affection for standard tunes brought startlingly new vitality to such unlikely songs as “The Surrey With the Fringe on Top.” And, on any given night, he didn’t hesitate to expand an improvisation to startling lengths, finding new ideas well beyond the imaginative limits of most jazz players.

“Rollins hates clichés and signature phrases — ‘licks’ — and refuses to play them,” critic Stanley Crouch wrote in the New Yorker in 2005. “Consequently, for him there are no highly polished professional performances. When he’s on, which is seven or eight times out of 10, Rollins — known as ‘the saxophone colossus’ — seems immense, summoning the entire history of jazz, capable of blowing a hole through a wall.”

He was also a master of structure, even during his more extended improvisations. Playing a standard tune, he would frequently develop paraphrases of the melody, taking it through unlikely re-imagining of the harmonies of a song. At times, the piano players in his groups would simply back off during part of Rollins’ solos, loath to risk following the twisting pathways of his improvising.

“The story begins with the melody,” he told Crouch. “You keep the story going by using the melody the way you hear it as something to improvise on. In reality, it should all be connected — the melody, the chords, the rhythm. It should all turn out to be one complete thing.”

Rollins clearly kept to that concept throughout his career, from his earliest recordings in the late ’40s, while he was still in his teens, to his work in his 70s and 80s. His playing style displayed evolving aspects over the years, and he chose a variety of different settings in which to display his improvisational wares. Yet the idea of an improvised solo as a story to tell, and of the melody as the vehicle for that story, was a constant in his music.

‘’I have the hope that a melody, any piece of music, can perform miracles,” Rollins told Lloyd Sachs in 2001 in the Chicago Sun-Times. “Years ago, Coltrane and myself used to feel that, boy, we were going to be able to turn the world around. We believed we could change the way people thought through music. That didn’t happen, but I still have faith in the power of music, in old songs, strong melodies, strong playing.’’

Theodore Walter Rollins was born Sept. 7, 1930, in New York City. His mother, Valborg, who had emigrated from St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands, worked as a domestic; his father, Walter, who had emigrated from St. Croix, was a petty officer in the U.S. Navy. Rollins and his two older siblings were all introduced to music early by their father, who was a clarinetist. His sister, Gloria, played piano; his brother, Valdemar, played the violin.

Rollins’ first instrument, at age 13, was the alto saxophone, followed by the tenor when he was in his mid-teens. By the time he graduated from Benjamin Franklin High School he was already working as a professional musician. He made his initial recordings in 1949 — first with singer Babs Gonzalez, then with pianist Bud Powell and trombonist Johnson. By 1961, he was beginning to perform and record with Davis, Parker and Monk.

Like many other young jazz artists of the period, however, he was deeply affected, not only by the playing, but by the lifestyles of the older beboppers who were his significant influences, many of whom had become addicted to drugs. Although Parker, his primary idol and mentor, urged him to stay clean, Rollins developed a heroin habit that eventually led to his arrest and 10-month imprisonment.

After his release, he was detained for violating the terms of his parole and sent to Federal Medical Center in Lexington, Ky. Emerging after four months, he was diagnosed, according to his record, as clinically “cured.”

Rollins returned to active playing, rapidly establishing himself as one of the important young saxophonists of his generation. After playing with the high-visibility Clifford Brown/Max Roach Quintet, Rollins recorded “Saxophone Colossus” in 1956 — a classic jazz album, and the highlight of a series of breakout recordings he made in the ’50s for the Prestige label. One of the tracks, a brightly melodic calypso theme titled “St. Thomas,” is Rollins’ best known composition, and a standard in the lexicon of jazz tunes.

In the late ’50s his musically exploratory efforts continued via “Tenor Madness,” a recording in which he is paired with Coltrane, showcasing the two principal tenor saxophone stylists of the era. He also recorded three albums — “Way Out West,” “A Night at the Village Vanguard” and “The Freedom Suite” — using the innovative lineup of tenor saxophone, bass and drums, omitting any chord-producing instrument.

Despite his rapid rise to the top of the jazz world, Rollins felt burned out in 1959 and decided to take time off to work on what he felt were the limitations in his music.

Seeking a location where he could practice without bothering the neighbors in his Manhattan apartment, he found a perch on the Williamsburg Bridge. When he returned to public view in 1962, he titled his comeback album “The Bridge,” quickly reestablishing his role as a primary jazz voice. For the balance of the ’60s he continued to explore new areas, with albums touching on the then-prevalent jazz avant-garde, Latin rhythms and one of his most persistent interests: the reexamination of unlikely standards from the Great American Songbook.

Rollins took another sabbatical at the end of the ’60s, when he went to India to study meditation, yoga and Eastern spirituality and philosophy.

On his return, he began to incorporate elements of pop, funk and rock in his music, primarily via his rhythm sections.

His recordings and performances from the ’80s on moved across the gamut of the various personal stylistic expressions he had developed in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. But, characteristically, he also frequently continued to stretch the limits of his music. One of the most unusual examples was his fascination with solo saxophone improvisations, notably on the appropriately titled “The Solo Album.”

In 2001, Rollins received a Grammy Award for jazz instrumental album for “This Is What I Do.” In 2006, at 75, he scored a triple win in DownBeat magazine’s readers poll with awards for No. 1 Tenor Saxophonist, Jazzman of the Year and Recording of the Year (for “Without A Song: The 9/11 Concert”). His performance on “Why Was I Born,” one of the tracks on the recording, was also awarded a Grammy for jazz instrumental solo.

Rollins was still searching and discovering while on tour into his 80s.

“I’m still trying to get a little further along the road to perfection, or salvation,” Rollins said in a 2011 Times profile. “I’m not there yet. I’m far enough away from that that I’m still engaged. Playing live is the only way. …

“On the concert stage, everything crystallizes. Performance is where it happens.”

In 2017, Rollins donated his archives to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, where it is available to the public. Rollins’ last public performance was in 2012.

Rollins leaves no immediate survivors. Lucille, his wife of nearly 40 years, died in 2004.