Cannes 2024: What is Raw Diamond, the only first feature film in the competition, worth? (critical)
Agathe Riedinger follows a heroine who dreams of being a reality TV star. A work in tune with its time, not devoid of flaws, but above all revealing raw talent: Malou Khebizi
Is this a way to keep strength for Megalopolis planned tomorrow? In any case, we could hear flies flying after the final image of Rough diamond, the only first feature film in the running for the Palme d'Or. No thunderous applause, no booing. A kind of really unfair indifference for a film that is certainly imperfect, but which is not part of the consensus. At a time when the Palais des Festivals is teeming with Tik Tokers documenting every moment of their “Cannes experience”, the filmmaker has notably found a unique way of talking about our era, that of social networks and narcissistic consumerism, while avoiding the charge easy moralizing. By going beyond the bad taste and superficiality to which we often, with a certain laziness, reduce these phenomena.
For a simple reason. Agathe Riedinger is, from her first to her last image, in the right place. She becomes one with her heroine. Liane is a 19-year-old teenager who lives in Fréjus with a failing mother (Andréa Bescond, astonishing) and her little sister. She dreams of escaping from this dreary daily life and thinks she's reaching her goal when she lands a casting for a reality TV show. But then begins the long, very long wait for his final selection. The powerfully empathetic gesture does not avoid any of the contradictions of this young woman, anything but spontaneously amiable. Rough diamond is in fact a rough film, which creates discomfort in the viewer. Because he embraces the roughness of his heroine. A young woman in rage. Unable to stay still even if it means exhausting herself. And obsessed with her freedom: freedom to dress as she wants, freedom to do what she wants with her body, freedom not to depend on a boyfriend and to remain a virgin.
The chosen format, 4/3, adds to the feeling of confinement. Liane is like a lion in a cage and seems to be constantly bumping into the four corners of a large screen that is too small for her. But beyond this technical bias, Agathe Riedinger was above all able to escape the numerous traps that awaited her. Starting with this central question: how to film the hyper-eroticization of this character with a remade body (tending towards his idea of perfection) without falling into sexy voyeurism? Riedinger manages, like a tightrope walker, to stay on a thin line. We could criticize its staging for being sometimes a little too academic, incapable of freeing itself from the obvious influence of American honey by Andrea Arnold, a little too demonstrative. However, this influence seems almost paradoxical as Rough diamond examines male-female relationships in a radically different way from the British filmmaker. Here, there is no trace of Manichaeism. The panoply of male characters, from the youngest to the oldest, reveals through its variety Riedinger's refusal to gender pre-established behavior. And this is undoubtedly why, despite the aforementioned faults, the filmmaker succeeds in capturing the permanent contradictory injunctions of our time so well. None of this would have been possible without the one she chose to play Liane, Malou Khebizi, who until now had no cinematic experience. Faced with the multitude of extreme and contrary emotions that she has to play, before the way in which she uses them, the term revelation seems weak. The word emergence is essential!
By Agathe Riedinger. With Malou Khebizi, Idir Azougli, Andrea Bescond… Duration: 1h43. Released October 9, 2024
