Manucure 24/24
2025 · 2m · France
Directed by Chloé Groussard, Julie Pacheco
Genres: dark comedy, drama, thriller
Tones: darkly comic, provocative, theatrical
Two nail technicians cruise the city in a customized car offering a 24/7 service — but Judy and Claudia aren't really coming to fix broken nails. A pulpy feminist thriller that turns a fake emergency-nail business into a coded rescue network for victims of domestic violence.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A nail salon front for a DV rescue operation is exactly the kind of premise that makes people go 'wait, WHAT?' — and the fact that Groussard and Pacheco actually pull it off, turning pulp and coded language into something genuinely subversive, is why this lands harder than it has any right to at two minutes.
The theatrical restraint here is admirable; the directors understand they're working in a tradition of genre-as-social-commentary and never let the pulp overtake the formal precision of what's being communicated through location, dialogue rhythm, and the car itself as mise-en-scène.
The choice to house the entire operation inside a moving vehicle — and to keep the camera's intimacy tight within that constraint — transforms a straightforward premise into something that feels economically ingenious, where every frame has to do double duty as both thriller and refuge.
Reviews
Parodie décalée des séries d'urgences médicales où deux prothésistes ongulaires répondent aux appels de détresse 24h/24, ce court métrage transforme la réparation d'ongles cassés en prétexte humoristique pour dénoncer les violences conjugales. Prix SensCritique au Nikon Film Festival 2025, ce premier essai de réalisation de deux comédiennes et amies révèle une approche ludique du cinéma, jouant sur les codes des formats télévisuels tout en suggérant avec finesse que derrière chacune de ces urgences d'apparence superficielle se cache une détresse plus profonde.