Wild Diamond (Diamant Brut), the review of the film presented at Cannes 77

Glossy filters, firm bodies, smooth skin and enthusiastic voices, we see dozens of them every day on social media. Every day, between videos of kittens, dancing raccoons and sponsorships, women’s bodies, filtered and modified, pass by the distorted lenses of social networks which, from a window onto the world, have become a peephole looking into our imperfect and messed up lives. What is returned, however, is a partial and sweetened vision, sometimes perfectly constructed to show a tiny part of our world, controlled and expendable to the god of consensus, that consensus that is expressed through likes, hearts and thumbs up.

But what effect does all this have on us? What does it make us believe in? These are the main questions that Agathe Riedinger asks herself in her debut feature film WildDiamond (Diamant Brutoriginal title) presented in competition at the 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival. The French director thus decides to focus on a specific category of people to investigate these questions: young women, those who have grown up in the digital age and who have long been bombarded by a series of unreal female prototypes, ideals of beauty that over time they change but always remain improbable and unattainable.

Liane’s possible redemption

Liane is a nineteen year old trying to break into the world of reality TV and social media and for this reason he undergoes an audition for a show called “Miracle Island“. After an apparently positive reaction from the producer, the girl is over the moon and finally feels that the change that would take her away from home is possible. Her family situation, in fact, is not the most rosy: with a mostly absent mother and irresponsible and a younger sister to stand by, Liane he already feels the weight of the world on his shoulders and craves crumbs of that love and recognition that she has always lacked. She has emotional needs that she searches for on the web and in the future and for this reason she develops a real obsession for that beauty that she sees represented by those bodies that flow filtered and perfect on the screen of her smartphone.

The myth of beauty

Perfection is the dress in which lies are too often dressed: bodies uncover themselves to cover themselves with expectations unattainable and the pressure on the female gender in this regard is certainly not new, even if the widespread diffusion of social media and their algorithms allow greater exposure to this type of conditioning, rewarded by a mechanism based on effort and reward. Wild Diamond shows this in many ways, first of all with writing which offers dialogues, perhaps a little stereotyped, but still coherent and effective.

“Only beautiful people are successful“ says the protagonist and, although simplistic, this phrase contains an increasingly widespread belief that leads to the ostentation of a hedonism that becomes an essential quality for success. The obsession with bodies thus leads to their objectificationeffectively told by another line uttered by the boy Liane is dating: “All women need a man”. For years women have been told to take care of their appearance, to make it fit into increasingly narrow canons, narrow like those high-heeled shoes that hurt the feet, like those skirts that don’t allow Liana to run, even when annoyed and The solution proposed by society is not awareness but the dominant male protection that uses and disposes of something that should not be claimed at will.

Social aesthetics

It is not only with writing, however, that Agathe Riedinger tries to convey these many concepts. To accompany Liane’s emotions and to make us understand how she feels the director uses the change of format which shifts to a claustrophobic four-thirds as the girl feels like she’s falling apart and which communicates the overwhelming anxiety that assails her, as well as her fear of not being able to succeed in life. Even the lenses used refer to a precise, purely social aesthetic, recalling those filters that Instagram had the distinction of clearing through customs. In the film, however, they hide nothing: Liane’s body is shown explicitly but never morbidlyin contrast to those images that scroll quickly on his phone.

The director, that comes from advertisingknows very well the mechanisms that regulate this world and chooses to play with it, even if with little balance, but without ever truly crossing the threshold of excess. Audio is also important: the rustling of clothes, the sound of nails touching the phone, cosmetics and various objects seem to come out of a reel and shows how the care taken with the film contributes to making Wild Diamond an interesting debutperhaps a little overflowing with themes but still communicative and valuable.