STENDHAL
2026 · 2m
Directed by Eulalie Leroy, Yohann Turi
Tones: contemplative, dark, surreal
Charlie leads an ordinary, happy life until she is struck by Stendhal syndrome, and beauty becomes for her the worst of horrors.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Stendhal syndrome as body horror? Bold inversion of the whole 'beauty transcends' Romantic ideal, but it lands a little too neatly—the premise does the work, not the film's subversive muscle.
A formally precise literalization of an art-historical condition that positions itself squarely in the lineage of psychological horror and Romantic irony; Leroy and Turi deserve credit for the rigor of this aesthetic constraint.
Two minutes to flip the entire value system of beauty-as-salvation, and they do it through what feels like a single tonal decision—treating the visual world not as spectacle but as a hostile force that closes in on Charlie's frame.