Malou Khebizi plays the starring role for this movie, a girl who is lost in the dreams of the deluded new fame culture. Just like so many of us.
Religion, according to Karl Marx, is the opiate of the masses. But today he would probably say that it’s fame the desire for it, what you have to do to get it, how fragmentary it is (the old “15 minutes” are now closer to 15 seconds in many cases) and everything that’s supposed to come with it. The new fame lusty, fickle and bred by social media is at the center of “Wild Diamond,” an astonishingly bold and honest French drama that premiered this morning at Cannes
It follows Liane (Malou Khebizi), a 19-year-old glam trainwreck who lives with her mother and kid sister in Fréjus, a town on the southern coast of France. Her life revolves around one thing: achieving some kind of fleeting connection with our up-from-nowhere apparatuses of fame those magical machines that turn people on Instagram and TikTok into overnight spangly vessels of adoration (and also reality TV stars, which seems to be where “Wild Diamond” has its sights set).
In her first scene she’s shoplifting fake bling from a department store because she literally can’t afford not to tart herself up into what she thinks she should look like. And this isn’t just about image; there’s something deeper going on here. She wears short-short jeans and a skintight mesh top, with hair that consists of a blonde layer falling over a dark-roots layer; her breasts are done; her lips have been filled by an amateur injector with hydraulic acid (so they pout like those on party dolls). On top of all that natural beauty, she manages to look harshly voluptuous enough to be mistaken for Brigitte Bardot as a dysfunctional shopping-mall Barbie.
She prances and twerks and taunts her friends and posts her selfies; that’s her life. Here’s the thing about the movie, though: When she’s stealing that fake bling in the department store, we look at her with a cool appraisal; our judgmental feelings are hardly positive. But when she gets back to her bedroom and starts unwrapping the plastic jewels then applying glue so she can stick them on the back of some five-inch heels that’s when it happens. As she kicks off her platform sandals, we see the red welts on her ankle (from wearing nothing but fuck-me pumps). And suddenly that desperation to accessorize herself into something desirable no longer feels superficial or narcissistic or deluded. It just feels sad. This is all there is for Liane, and you can’t really blame her because these are all things she has learned from us.
Definitely not only this look, Liane is selling; she violates the transgression that oooo! look at me I could be in the sex industry. She’s a Catholic girl in touch with sin (although she’s never slept with anyone) who therefore believes that she must pay for her fame. When she tattoos her stomach with a homemade tattoo, it’s really an act of penance. (She shakes from pain until she records her chirpy with girl power ness infomercial of an Instagram post about it.) But the attitude goes along with the tat, too, the hyped aggression, which in her case is a blend of hip-hop braggadocio and reality-TV confrontation. Because being in your face is how you get noticed and gain followers and become “famous” and become an influencer and make a fortune and then you’re presumably fulfilled.
For Liane, the trick is drawing the fame-whore theatrics out of her inner misery. Her outrage feeds off her trauma. She performs for the world because “authentic” is what sells. Malou Khebizi played this character in a short–a surly dynamism sears the screen. Liane is all about vanity; yet Bonaire-like has acted here, tethered to every one of Liane’s many volatile mood swings combustibility Khebizi reminded me at moments.The story of Liane isn’t just that she’s furious. It’s that she worships a false god.
A reality-TV producer calls up Liane on her voicemail once upon time. She loved watching how much clothes off Liane took on social media would like for to see if maybe it could work out between them as business partners? Would want for to maybe consider coming down to audition for “Miracle Island,” where 15 pretty young things live together in some beach house forever? A spot on a reality show about 15 pretty young people living together in a beach house for eternity. So Liane is getting her shot. In the interview, she projects the right bad-girl attitude, encouraged by the producer who says, “We don’t want a goody-goody.” The way the shows are packaged, the cast members are encouraged to sell themselves to each other (when they’re not hating on each other). That’s how they become “stars.”
The stunning thing about “Wild Diamond” is that it’s telling this story Liane’s life and all of our lives corrupt dreams we’re being sold with an Andrea Arnold or Dardenne level of dramatic power (or light Sofia Coppola touch of “Bling Ring”). She intercuts comments to Liane’s SM posts–a combination of worship and hate (“Vengeance is your glory.” “She just wants to be fucked.” “Kill yourself”) cuts. And the scenes with Liane at home are devastating because they cleave our empathy in half. Her mother has given up on her–with good reason: lying, stealing selfishness from a girl whose only dad now works here either–and we can see why.
Nonetheless, the unhappiness of these families is rooted in economics. Liane’s employment counselor is a person she doesn’t want to work with; she wants it all: wealth. The new Gilded Age leaders have created these distractions as ways of fooling everyone else if Karl Marx were around, he’d have a lot to say about how social media and reality TV function. It’s the lottery with lip gloss and spandex: a chance for the masses to “have it all.” As though becoming a TikTok dance craze icon or a reality-TV star who then becomes an influencer a nobody who gets to be the corporate flavor of the month were really a viable career option.
Liane meets this biker kid (Alexis Manenti), and there seems to be some romantic attraction between them (the feeling is mutual), but those scenes get dragged out for too long. But then again, this whole movie is designed as a downward spiral (which means that it’s also designed as an upward spiral). After what seems like forever, it turns out that the reality-TV producer has ghosted Liane. And why wouldn’t she? There are a thousand girls out there just like her. But then here’s where things get interesting the ending of “Annette” surprises you. After all that despair, after all those glitzy delusions piling up redemption! Redemption connected to what a good movie can do. Seated on an airplane high in the sky, Liane looks out the window and sees well, something beautiful happens there involving light and sun and eye. The false god has smiled. And we feel blessed by not just any filmmaker but by one as accomplished as Leos Carax lighting up our screens at this late stage in cinema history.
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