PARFUM ABRICOT
2022 · 4m
Directed by Zoé Lacau
Genres: comedy, coming-of-age
Southwest France, 1986: friends, the beach, doughnuts and mopeds — a sweet taste of summer with Steph and her buddies.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a sun-dappled memory film about friendship and apricot pastries—exactly the kind of thing that makes me suspicious, except Lacau leans into the artifice so hard it becomes almost subversive, treating nostalgia like a flavor to deconstruct rather than swallow whole.
A formally precise piece of summer portraiture that sits comfortably in the lineage of French New Wave character studies; Lacau's editing rhythm treats these small moments—the moped rides, the beach laughter—with the compositional care usually reserved for something grander.
The decision to anchor the entire film's emotional weight on texture and taste—the apricot doughnut as a tactile memory-object—rather than plot or dialogue reveals a filmmaker who understands that constraint breeds specificity; every sensory choice here earns its place on four minutes.