Petites filles modèles
2026 · 2m
Directed by Hélène Habout
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, tender
Like every morning in front of her mirror, Lucie makes herself beautiful for school, and her friends have all done the same — until an unexpected encounter makes them doubt whether beauty might be something else entirely.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A two-minute reckoning with beauty standards that could've been an after-school special, except Habout refuses to moralize—she just lets the doubt hang there, suspended, which is infinitely more dangerous than any message.
The formal restraint here sits in conversation with a lineage of French cinema interrogating the feminine gaze; Habout's mirror-as-frame echoes Varda and Dardenne without genuflecting, positioning beauty as philosophical crisis rather than narrative problem.
What makes this work isn't the premise—it's the single decision to hold on the girls' faces in that moment of doubt without cutting away, letting the performance space breathe instead of resolving it, which transforms a typical coming-of-age beat into something genuinely unsettled.