VAIN
2026 · 2m
Directed by Julien Charrieras
Genres: drama, essay film
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Under the dust and the blood, a man remains to be found: in the intimacy of a salon, between the click of scissors and the cold of a razor, a woman gives shape back to his face, and as the locks fall a dialogue settles in about sacrifice and the need to be 'presentable' — beauty here as an answer given to silence.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Two minutes of a woman cutting a man's hair shouldn't work as a statement about presentability and silence, but Charrieras refuses the obvious beat—there's something genuinely strange in how tenderly he lets the scissors do the talking, almost mocking the whole idea that grooming fixes anything.
The formal restraint here is exquisite: a two-minute essay film that knows exactly what it owes to the tradition of intimate portraiture and durational cinema, where the rhythm of scissors becomes syntax, and the salon becomes a confessional bound by the rules of grooming rather than faith.
The entire film pivots on one choice—letting the dialogue sit *underneath* the sound of scissors and running water rather than competing with it—which transforms what could be sentimental into something genuinely unsettling and real.