Bechdel
2026 · 2m
Directed by Clément Launay
Tones: darkly comic, humorous
In a café, two girls discuss a new conquest, but are soon disturbed by an overly curious customer.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A two-minute film that weaponizes the Bechdel test itself as a punchline—two women discussing desire get interrupted by a man who can't help but center himself, turning meta-commentary into physical comedy. It's the kind of subversive premise that sounds like a think piece until you realize it's actually *funny*.
Launay's deployment of café mise-en-scène and tonal control channels a lineage of French comedic shorts, where social discomfort becomes formal precision; the interruption functions as both narrative pivot and formal statement about whose story gets to exist.
The entire film hinges on one performance choice—how the overly curious customer *enters* and refuses to leave—and that single beat of uncomfortable persistence transforms what could be a didactic premise into something genuinely unsettling and alive.