RATE ME
2015 · 17m · UK
Directed by Fyzal Boulifa
Genres: drama, experimental
Tones: contemplative, dark, provocative
A teenage escort known as Coco is rendered through the reviews posted about her on a British escort website, with each client's written account becoming a distinct chapter — exposing the violent gap between how she is perceived and who she might actually be.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Boulifa's formal conceit — a young woman assembled from the reviews her clients post — is not merely clever; it is a precise and damning argument about whose language gets to constitute a life.
Seventeen minutes. Teenage escort portrait built entirely from client reviews. Boulifa's gambit — let the unreliable testimony of clients construct the subject — is a real formal idea about who is allowed to define a young woman. Provocative, structured, the kind of risk worth taking.
Building a character entirely from her clients' unreliable testimony — that's a vicious formal inversion that puts the audience inside the violence of who gets to define a young woman. Seventeen minutes of structural cruelty in service of critique.
Festivals
- Cannes Film Festival 2015, Illy Award for Best Short Film
- Toronto International Film Festival 2015
- Sundance Film Festival 2016
- BFI London Film Festival 2015
- Leeds International Film Festival 2015, Best British Short