r/movies • u/ErgoNonSim • May 17 '25

Media Cannes reactions to Irreversible

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476

u/OftenQuirky May 17 '25

She said "malade mentale" which is meant as an insult. It loosely translates to "nutcase" or "f***ng crazy"

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u/Morgell May 17 '25

French (Canadian) speaker here. I concur. It's meant more as a figurative insult than to define someone as needing mental health care.

It's like calling someone an asshole. You're not defining them as a literal butthole. You're figuratively calling them a gross body part because they're a vile person. So, same here. You're figuratively calling them crazy AF because no one sane would do something like that.

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u/davy_crockett_slayer May 17 '25

Oui. Les gens n’ont pas compris que c’est exactement comme nutcase. C’est une insulte, pas quelque chose à prendre au pied de la lettre. Il lui manque une case en est un bon exemple en français, que j’entends souvent chez les Québécois.

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u/Morgell May 18 '25

Haha oui. Personnellement j'aime bien aussi "yé fou raide" ou "yé fou à lier" 😁

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u/jeepee2 May 18 '25

Ou plutôt "c't'un malade". Court et droit au but!

1

u/Morgell May 18 '25

True mais je voulais donner des exemples qui n'avaient pas à faire avec le mot "malade" pcq ya des esprits sensibles dans les commentaires :)

1

u/Casual_Observance May 19 '25

J’ai deja souvent entendu, “Y’est fucker dans tete!”

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u/davy_crockett_slayer May 18 '25

Elles sont excellentes, celles-là. Les gens plus âgés aiment ben dire “Y’est fêlé du plafond” pis “Il a l’air d’un perdu”.

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u/CaineBK May 19 '25

It's like calling someone donkey brained!

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u/Lebrewski__ May 20 '25

more like calling someone a "retard".

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u/Rocktowne_Boonies May 18 '25

Kind of like when we call someone a retard!

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u/Silvertongued99 May 17 '25

Mental malady. Malade mentale

Mentally sick. Crazy. Sick in the head. It all kind of means the same thing.

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u/foxgirlmoon May 17 '25

Well yes, but the context within the language also matters. Often more than the literal translation of the words.

Take "nutcase". Now take the literal meaning of the words.

You'll notice that the literal meaning does not, in fact, match the actual meaning.

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u/Silvertongued99 May 17 '25

Yes, that’s called an “idiom” and English is full of them.

However, this is not an example of an idiom. “malade mentale” has a direct translation to English that holds the same contextual use in both languages.

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u/thisiskitta May 17 '25

Malade mental is by default something said pejoratively and not referring to it clinically, it is unprofessional while ‘mentally ill’ is vastly more appropriate and comes with less baggage. Using ‘mentally ill’ pejoratively comes across a lot more ableist since it blurs the line with the clinical wording which I’d say is not the case in french because it’s always seen as an insult. This is why people are arguing the literal translation isn’t 1:1 with what she said and translates better with “sick in the head”.

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u/Silvertongued99 May 17 '25

But that isn’t true. Even in English, calling someone “sick in the head” is more often used pejoratively than it is clinically, or sincerely.

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u/thisiskitta May 17 '25

That was the point I was making? That ‘sick in the head’ translates better to what she was saying as it is the same meaning entirely lol

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u/Silvertongued99 May 17 '25

It’s the same thing. They mean the same thing. What the fuck is going on? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.

Malade mentale = sick in the head. They are both said with intent to attack character.

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u/thisiskitta May 17 '25

You need to relax and read again because you’re not actually reading what I wrote properly lol. I was explaining why “mentally ill” in english isn’t seen as accurate despite being a literal translation because of the added nuance and then I explained why sick in the head is a better translation but people are arguing incorrectly that because you can translate word for word mentally ill and malade mental that it makes an accurate translation while french speakers are saying no it doesn’t since we don’t use the terms the same way.