Mimi
2018 · 4m · Francia
Directed by Lisa Fukaya
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
Mimi gets a pimple for the first time, and fearing she will be different from the girls around her, she begins to imitate them, losing her own singularity as society makes her vulnerable.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A pimple as existential crisis is clever enough, but the film plays it straight—it's the kind of coming-of-age parable that practically writes itself, and Fukaya doesn't seem interested in breaking the mold she's inherited.
Fukaya positions herself squarely in the lineage of introspective youth cinema, with a formal restraint that recalls early Céline Sciamma; the melancholy is earned through compositional patience rather than narrative manipulation.
The genius move here is how Fukaya uses imitation—the actual mirroring of gestures and expressions—as the film's visual syntax rather than just its theme; it's a formal choice that doesn't announce itself, and suddenly you're watching conformity through the grammar of the edit itself.