when the hero dreams of Cinderella

TFX – WEDNESDAY AUGUST 4 AT 8:45 P.M. – FILM

Imagine a world where women have the attributes of men: dress, body language, political, economic, domestic power … And men those of women. Project this image into a military dictatorship based on strong personality cult, locked in by state religious doctrine and you will have the context of Jacky in the kingdom of girls.

Continuing his transformation as a filmmaker, Riad Sattouf adopts the approach that has succeeded him in the field of comics where he is a past master in the art of the opposite. After The Beautiful Kids (2009), an inspired teen-movie, that a modest production budget did not prevent electrifying the box office (nearly 1 million spectators in theaters), it radically changes its tone.

Partially shot in the studio, in costumes, with a bunch of famous actors, this dystopia takes place in an imaginary country whose inhabitants speak a strange sabir, feed on white porridge distributed by taps, idolize dwarf horses …

Dressed in military uniforms, the women have several husbands who are responsible for satisfying them sexually and taking care of household chores. Men, for their part, do not leave their “veils”, kinds of burqas that cover them from head to toe. The older ones live in fear of their wives, the younger ones waiting for a marriage proposal.

Schoolboy relaxation

But Jacky (Vincent Lacoste, hero of Beautiful Kids) has other ambitions. Courted by all the girls of his village, he refuses their advances because his heart beats for the colonel, heir to the throne played by Charlotte Gainsbourg. When she organizes a ball to choose a husband from among the boys of the country, he wants to take his chance, as Cinderella did in her time.

Stripped by his adoptive family of the prom ticket his mother had bought him before dying, he disguises himself as a girl to infiltrate the ceremony, and seduce the colonel, pushing the game of permutation of genres on which the film is based a notch further. .

In a succession of scenes, the film deploys a daring black burlesque, if not always funny. The uneven result reflects Riad Sattouf’s attitude towards his film, an alloy of great fictional and graphic ambition, with a form of schoolboy relaxation which finds its full expression in an incredible last shot, violently subversive.

The result is a feeling of freshness that contrasts with the herd professionalism to which so many popular French comedies testify. It makes all the more want to forgive the film its flaws, as the staging serves a virulent criticism of all oppressions, starting with that of conformism. A healthy slap in the ambient chilliness.