Je veux être beau
2026 · 2m · France
Directed by Gabriel Château-Thierry
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, tender
Mario has been told so often that he will never be beautiful that the idea weighs on him like a curse, and other people's gaze has become his prison. Then he hears of Vénus, a woman said to have transformed similar cases — and on the day of their meeting, everything might change.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The premise wants to be a fairy tale about self-acceptance, but it's wound so tight in earnestness that it never finds the perverse angle that would actually make it sing—Vénus feels like a plot device rather than a subversion.
There's a composed elegance to how Château-Thierry frames the weight of the male gaze as literal burden, situating this squarely in the lineage of French cinema's psychological portraiture, though the resolution stays safely within convention.
What elevates this is the decision to make the transformation happen *during* the encounter—not before, not after—which means everything hinges on a single moment of presence between two people, and that's where the 2 minutes becomes bulletproof.