La reine
2026 · 2m
Directed by Aurélie Kavafian
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, tender
Before a mirror, two teenage girls oppose two visions of beauty - makeup as power, naturalness as conviction - as the gaze of others shapes their self-image.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Two girls staring at themselves in a mirror debating makeup vs. naturalness sounds like a PSA, but Kavafian's refusal to pick a side — to let both visions breathe as equally valid — is quietly radical in a culture obsessed with moral clarity on beauty.
The mirror as both literal frame and symbolic threshold places this squarely in a lineage of feminist cinema examining the male gaze, though Kavafian's formal restraint and the tenderness between the subjects elevates it beyond polemic into something more philosophically nuanced.
The entire film hinges on a single sustained two-shot — the decision to keep both girls in frame rather than cutting between them — which transforms what could've been a debate into an intimate act of witnessing, making their disagreement feel like connection instead of opposition.