Writers: Carlotta Coco, Thomas Colineau and Alexis Langlois
Director: Alexis Langlois
Perhaps the strangest film of this year’s BFI Flare Festival is this French lesbian romp set in the world of reality singing shows. One punk + one starlet = two divas in this exuberantly imaginative examination of fame and its short-lived burn. But despite the music and the bright colours, Queens of Drama is decidedly one-note.
Mimi (Louiza Aura) can sing for sure and sails through the heats of a French singing competition. She has a strong voice, full of emotion, full of heartache. The same can’t be said about Billie (Gio Ventura), however. She screams and calls for the end of the patriarchy in her audition. The judges have no choice but to call for security. Billie is ignominiously thrown out of the TV studio.
Opposite attract, and soon, Mimi and Billie are having a torrid love affair, arguing as much as they have sex. Mimi is drawn to Billie’s fearlessness and grit while Billie seems to bask in Mimi’s good looks and silky voice. Much to Billie’s chagrin, their relationship must be kept secret in case it jeopardises Mimi’s chances of winning the show.
It’s a familiar enough story, but director Alexis Langlois keeps it strange with her mixture of bubble pop and Gothic hues. The surrounding characters, save Mimi’s best friend, are rendered as grotesques, especially the TV hosts with their cosmetically constructed faces and their savage outlooks. Nevertheless, everyone begins to look the same, and the whole film is pitched at the same level. The balance between melodrama and filthiness often doesn’t work. The film tries too hard to shock and the humour is lost in this attempt.
When one of the characters shaves off her hair, the story’s parallel to the ups and downs of Britney Spears’ career is made clear. It seems a little ungenerous of Langlois to poke fun at Britney’s mental health crisis, but there’s just enough context here revealing how the media and music management promote stars only to knock them down. Halfway through the film Billie sheds her masculine looks and ends up looking like Madonna in that picture that gripped the world in 2023, all lips and cheekbones. There’s a sense that the film is criticising such women who have plastic surgery, a debate that has recently been called, by some, misogynist.
But mostly the film is kind to the divas, even the wicked ones like Steevyshady who narrates the story from the future. Two of the songs could be quite memorable if it weren’t for the fact that they are performed ad finitum. Of course, this excess is part of the film’s dizzying aesthetic running almost like a coked-up Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. Much of the film is filmed on set and the one shot outside (making a video for Mimi’s first hit single) jars a little, taking us out of the world of cellar dives and dreary award ceremonies.
If only Queens of Drama was funnier or weirder or shorter or cleverer or sexier, then this take on lesbian lust and the music industry might be more gratifying. But for a debut feature, it’s unlike anything else at the festival.
Queens of Drama is screening at BFI Flare 2025 from 19-30 March.
