Writers: Carlotta Coco, Thomas Colineau and Alexis Langlois
Director: Alexis Langlois
Alexis Langlois may not mind their film Queens of Drama being described as ‘inexplicable’ and seemed happy with the description of it feeling as though it were written by a teenager at its BFI London Film Festival 2024 introduction. Musing on the fame journey and its impact on a teenage lesbian love affair, this near 2-hour film overindulges emotionally, visually, tonally and in its intensity as principal characters live large. If you leave feeling old, baffled and slightly unsure what all the angst was about, then the filmmakers may feel they have done their job.
Both contestants on a TV talent show, punk singer Billie and pop princess in waiting Mimi meet and fall passionately in love, unable to hold back on their physical attraction to one. But when Mimi becomes the star she has always dreamed of being, she is forced to hide her sexuality, leaving Billie feeling betrayed and lovelorn for years to come.
For anyone older than the Queens of Drama target market, nothing on earth would make you want to be a teenager again having watched this movie. So many creatives are romantic about first love but Carlotta Coco, Thomas Colineau and Langlois’ impression of volatile emotions, excessive feeling of all kinds leaving characters on a high or in the pits of despair, and the total immersion in their own unmeasured and relentless experience of the world is both exhausting and sometimes irritating. Neither Mimi or Billie are particularly likeable, both so wrapped up in themselves that any sense of their ‘epic’ and ‘timeless’ love story just leaves the audience wondering why they can’t just pull themselves together and go for a quiet sit until they calm down.
There is an interesting morality tale or fantasy in here about the impact of sudden, global fame and, with its early 2000s setting, some neat commentary about the ways female popstars were viewed and mistreated, even referencing a famous head shaving moment. But there is little beneath the surface despite the music video, YouTuber intensity that the writers create which has Billie and Mimi perform full songs as part of the movie, contrasting the punk / metal sound with the catch electronic pop that makes Mimi a star.
The central partnership, for all of the film’s intent, lacks credibility – what would someone so anti-Establishment as Gio Ventura’s Billie be doing on a corporate talent show and, given her cool and hardcore aesthetic, the scale of heartbreak just doesn’t align. Louiza Aura’s Mimi has a little more substance, especially in the modification of her image (the film’s only subtly) when she becomes famous that comments on the inherent racism in the music business, but that two other women declare that they will love her forever (they won’t) is insufficiently grounded in personality.
There are ideas in Queens of Drama that are really smart and as a satire of the music industry this has potential. But Langlois tries to do too many things and shouts them all at once, leaving the audience grateful to be old enough to know better.
Queens of Drama is screening at the BFI London Film Festival 2024.
