Gender in the feminine
Co-produced with Liégeois de Frakas, (already behind the Palme d’Or Titanium de Julia Ducournau), animated closed last May, the 63rd Cannes Critics’ Week. The French filmmaker of Moroccan origin chooses the genre to address the feminist question. In the exact line of Tiger Stripes by Malaysian Amanda Nell Eu (Grand Prize of Critics’ Week in 2023).
“Tiger Stripes”: being a young girl in Malaysia is horrible!
If, in his first feature film, Fragile in 2022, Emma Benestan remained close to her mentor Abdellatif Kechiche (for whom she was the editor), here she distances herself to venture into genre cinema. Even if we find the same taste for reality to describe the daily life of Mediterranean youth and immerse us in a real universe, that of Camargue culture, with its black bulls, its white horses, its arenas, its salt marshes… A captivating region, magnificently captured in images by the great Flemish photo director Ruben Impens (regular collaborator of Felix Van Groeningen and Julia Ducourneau).
A wonderful Oulaya Amamra
Already showing in FragileOulaya Amamra occupies the entire screen here. Cesar for best hope for Divines in 2017, reviewed in Farewell to the night by André Téchiné or in Smoking makes you cough by Quentin Dupieux, the young actress of Moroccan origin is breathtaking in the role of this young woman trying at all costs to integrate into a world of men, even if it means paying painful consequences.
“Fragile”: a first film in the form of contemporary marivaudage under the Mediterranean sun
Despite her committed actress, her aesthetic qualities and her undeniable evocative power to address the major current feminist themes, animated unfortunately suffers from a somewhat threadbare scenario, which does not offer a lot of surprises.
animated Fantasy drama Of Emma Benestan Scenario Emma Benestan et Julie Debiton Photography Ruben Impens Musique Yan Wagner Montage Clemence Diard With Oulaya Amamra, Damien Rebattel, Vivien Rodriguez, Claude Chaballier… Duration 1h38
