Ugly
2016 · 15m · France
Directed by Mickaël Cohen
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, theatrical
Franck and Elisabeth are about to have a baby — but on D-day, Elisabeth's secrets are revealed, and for Franck nothing happens as expected in this true-story comedy.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Cohen takes the sacred birth narrative and detonates it from the inside—a true story that refuses sentiment and instead sprints toward absurdist chaos the moment Elisabeth's secrets detonate. This is what happens when you treat comedy as a weapon against expectation itself.
The film operates within a legible tradition of domestic comedy-drama while maintaining formal control over its tonal shifts; the theatrical absurdism feels considered rather than indulgent, grounded in the specificity of documented experience.
The precision is in how Cohen sustains Elisabeth's secret—the script and performance hold it tight enough that when it breaks, every subsequent beat pivots on that single moment of revelation, transforming what could've been sentimentality into something genuinely disorienting.