“Diamant Brut”, Agathe Riedinger’s promising feature debut

Liane, a.k.a. Malou Khebizi, 19 years old, face full of makeup, hair lengthened by her peroxyde blonde extensions, bimbo silhouette enhanced by an array of artifices, dreams of reality TV. As she waits for the results of a casting call for the program ‘Miracle Island’, the young woman ambles around the devitalized town of Fréjus, under the sweltering heat of yet another summer of boredom and hardship. Diamant brut lands into French cinema by occupying a spot that hadn’t yet been taken – unless, perhaps, on a less tawdry level, by the Belgian project Rien à foutre – the spot on which lives a youth whose rapport to the world and whose need for recognition would necessarily pass through a desire for abundance and celebrity and an uninterrupted flow of images.

With its heroine that is looking for some bright and luxuriant sense of beauty – she nearly seems to be affected by Stendhal’s syndrome – Diamant Brut’s staging is loaded with visual revelations that are a testament to the complicity of Liane’s obsessed gaze. If we can lament the fact that the film does succumb to its tendency for calvary – which is fostered by Christlike imagery – Diamant Brut nonetheless marks the birth of an interesting new filmmaker and its actress.



Source link : https://www.lesinrocks.com/cinema/diamant-brut-agathe-riedingers-promising-feature-debut-618284-15-05-2024/

Author : Marilou Duponchel

Publish date : 2024-05-15 16:49:11

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