Tu es bien plus jolie
2026 · 2m
Directed by Alexandre Sicaud
Tones: contemplative, dark, melancholic
Two women each try in their own way to survive the occupation, when beauty is no longer a choice but an obligation — an imposed gaze, a means of survival.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Beauty-as-survival under occupation is fertile conceptual ground, but Sicaud plays it fairly straight—I wanted him to fracture the premise, to make us *uncomfortable* with how the film itself gazes at these women. He's built the cage but won't let it collapse.
A precise formal response to a classical subject: the occupied body as site of impossible choice. The 2-minute constraint forces an almost sculptural restraint, and you can feel Sicaud's awareness of cinema's long history of gendered suffering—he doesn't exploit it, he examines the frame itself.
The restraint is the thing: in 120 seconds, Sicaud refuses spectacle and chooses instead a single, held compositional idea that lets the viewer complete the moral weight. That discipline—knowing what *not* to show—is what separates this from a dozen other occupation dramas made on twice the budget.