La beauté du geste
2026 · 2m
Directed by Angèle Saleille, Mathilde Desanges
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic
Henri, a brilliant if slightly awkward man, has traded his civil servant's suit for the casual jeans and tee-shirt of a startupper. He has agreed to be interviewed by a local outlet to promote his app, "La beauté du geste" — a promising concept, according to him.
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A startup pitch disguised as satire—which means it's actually just satire dressed up trying to seem clever, and yet somehow the film *knows* this and leans into the absurdity anyway. Two minutes of a man selling the concept of gesture itself while being constitutionally incapable of making one; it's the kind of premise that shouldn't work but does, precisely because it commits to its own ridiculousness.
The film sits comfortably within a lineage of French institutional satire, though its brevity and tonal control—the careful calibration between Henri's earnestness and the concept's fundamental emptiness—suggest filmmakers aware of how Tati and Vigo handled bureaucratic absurdism at feature length. There's a formal restraint here that serves the comedy.
The entire film hinges on the casting choice: an actor who can embody both genuine conviction and complete obliviousness, and Saleille and Desanges make the bold decision to let his sincerity do all the heavy lifting rather than winking at the camera. That single refusal to undercut him is what transforms a one-joke premise into something that actually stings.