Wild Diamond

The spectacle is a social relationship between people mediated by an accumulation of images that serve to alienate us from a lived life.
Guy Debord

In Diamond Brut (the original title, more faithful to the story), Agathe Riedinger delivers a haunting yet tender portrait of a generation that has made visibility its moral horizon. The protagonist, Liane (portrayed with intensity by Malou Khebizi), very young at nineteen, embodies the existential tension between the desire for social redemption and the desperate need to be seen, not to disappear into the shadows of marginalization.

The film builds an almost hypnotic atmosphere, where the phone screen is not just a technological object but an ontological device: in that digital interface, Liane seeks not only approval but confirmation of her existence. This alienation is not episodic: the camera envelops us in her fantasies. In certain sequences—such as the one in the nightclub—Liane’s gaze drifts into a kind of visual trance, almost ascetic, as if others’ beauty were a sacred realm where she longs to be elevated.

Liane invests her body—and her spirit—in constructing an image: she has already undergone cosmetic procedures, modifications that signal how much she regards beauty as currency. It is not mere vanity but a strategy to escape the gray confines of her condition: beauty becomes both a means of emancipation and a trap. As the director explains, her character embodies a contradiction: she uses femininity to elevate herself, but it is a construction rooted in patriarchal and social systems.

Her little sister, round-faced with tattooed eyebrows like an adult, dances with an emulated, precocious, and unsettling sensuality while their mother confronts Liane with the issue of “freedom”:
 “Is being loved a talent? What kind of dictatorship is this?” referring to social media followers...

The nineteen-year-old’s ambition is not innocent yet retains a purity; everyone can see her, but no one can touch her. Liane awaits confirmation from the reality show, Miracle Island, believing that from there she can get a ticket to the world that matters: a fabulous—almost salvific—promise of redemption, but deeply ambiguous.

The compromise with reality TV is not only psychological but social, and this participation seems to represent an escape route, an act of survival rather than a mere whim, quickly turning into an obsession. The director uses her cinematic gaze to denounce a broader reality where show business culture exploits and in some way sacrifices fragile youths to construct narratives of rapid celebrity.

At the same time, the film explores the early dehumanization implicit in media mechanisms: Liane is not just “a reality contestant,” she is molded, castrated, reshaped by a system that demands conflict, beauty, visibility. The power of being looked at simultaneously becomes the power of transformation but also a sentence to always be “on stage.”

What makes this portrayal particularly powerful is its sacred tension: the young woman’s desire seems almost religious. At times, she uses sermonic language, as if her journey were a mission:
 “I walk with the Lord... we are soldiers, we will have our revenge.”
 Her gestures—gluing glitter onto modest but vertiginously high shoes, preparing for auditions—take on a ritual intensity, a liturgy of appearance that speaks of faith, hope, but also of the void this “faith” seeks to fill, alongside the marks it engraves on her body with pain and sacrifice.

However, the promised salvation never clearly manifests: the “paradise of reality TV” remains a voice-over, a mirage that Liane chases but never fully grasps, an awaited response, sometimes obsessive.

This metaphysical ambiguity lies at the heart of the film’s existential expression: the dream of fame is both praised and criticized, desired and feared. This is certainly also Liane’s conflict, always suspended between desire and enjoyment, between “dream” and reality.

From a social perspective, there is no judgment: no condemnation of Liane, but reflection on the conditions that make fame a legitimate aspiration, perhaps for those who grew up on the margins. However, the social violence inherent in reality TV is highlighted: to gain visibility, you must expose yourself, generate drama, make your vulnerability a product.

The director explores how media culture promotes a “mythology of appearance” that is far from neutral: behind the obsession with followers, likes, and attention, hides a power system that grants recognition only to those who accept becoming commodities. Liane’s figure becomes symbolic: it is not just the story of a girl but a generational manifesto of emotional precariousness, social invisibility, and the need for redemption.

The sophisticated soundtrack, composed by Audrey Ismaël, favors light, almost suspended electronic atmospheres that follow the protagonist’s movements more like an internal pulse than an emotional commentary; an expressive sobriety that is very effective: an essential vibration that accompanies the narrative fractures. Music that works by subtraction, refined and calibrated, capable of building atmosphere without invading the dramaturgical space.

Diamond Brut is a deeply ambivalent work. It is at once denunciation and elegy, fierce critique and empathetic understanding. Liane is not portrayed as “negative”: she is a victim of a larger logic but also an agent of her own destiny, with genuine dreams and a fragile yet combative strength that constantly runs—angry and perched on towering heels.

In contemporary cinema, where social media and reality shows are often treated satirically or superficially, Riedinger’s film stands out for its philosophical fracture: the silent pain, the confusion of existing in a world where a person’s value is measured in likes, applause, and visibility.

Marco Trevisan