Jolie Monstre
2026 · 2m
Directed by Stan Pacotte
Tones: contemplative, tender
A young couple, the fantasy of everyday life, and an old unplugged keypad phone: how does one find the words to say things to each other?
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Two minutes of a couple circling the same unsaid thing through an *unplugged keypad phone*—it's so formally constrained it almost feels like a dare, and I respect the perversity of choosing obsolescence as your emotional amplifier, but the premise wants to be stranger than the execution lets it.
Pacotte situates this squarely in the lineage of minimal relationship cinema—the Bresson school of objects-as-witnesses—and the formal restraint of two minutes forces a precision in every glance and silence that recalls the tautness of mid-century structural cinema.
The decision to make the unplugged keypad the fulcrum—that it *can't* connect but still holds their attention, still matters—transforms what could be maudlin into something genuinely affecting; that single tonal choice reframes the whole film.