Biopic
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In her first feature film, Céline Sallette gently retraces the journey of the painter and visual artist Niki de Saint Phalle, played by the Quebec actress ideally suited for the role.
An artist biopic is a biopic in its entirety, and therefore twice as likely to fall into the genre’s failings: the grandeur of a destiny whose success is known in advance, the ode to singular genius but death therefore decorative, the secret promotion of the filmmaker himself, which is measured by the figure he resurrects. With Niki, presented at Cannes in May (Un certain regard selection), Céline Sallette moves on to directing by choosing a figure who challenges our contemporary biases: a woman who went from model to total artist, Niki de Saint Phalle had to impose herself in a patriarchal environment on the professionally and, on the personal side, confronting the memory of the rape inflicted by her father when she was a child.
Contrechamp impossible
So many aspects stand against the film, as it is difficult to go against the plotted story of emancipation, and to film anything other than an edifying ode to the power of art against the low blows of the life. The first shot of Niki, who poses, heavily made-up, for a photoshoot, recalls the Pablo Larraín portraits of women (which he strings together these days like
