C'est Beau C'est Bon
2026 · 2m
Directed by Isalyne Hebert
Genres: comedy, essay film
Tones: contemplative, humorous
Over coffee, Flo and Dom argue about the French language — expressions in France and in Québec, and above all, why do we say 'c'est beau'?
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Two people bickering about the semantics of a single French phrase for two minutes sounds like the most tedious premise imaginable—which is exactly why Hebert's refusal to resolve it, to let the argument *be* the point, feels genuinely subversive; she's made a film about language that trusts language to do nothing but fail us, and that's delicious.
Hebert situates this squarely in the lineage of Varda's essayistic digressions and the Québécois essay-film tradition, where linguistic and cultural specificity becomes formal rigor; the restraint of the form—two voices, one question, minimal staging—recalls the best of Marker's meditation pieces.
The whole film pivots on one choice: the decision to let the two voices overlap and circle back without ever landing on an answer, and the sound design that makes that repetition feel less frustrating than tender, which is the only move that keeps this from being a sketch.