QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FROM CANNES

IIn this biographical drama, director Céline Sallette posits a number of interesting theories on Niki de Saint Phalle (played with magnificent conviction by Charlotte Le Bon.) Throughout the duration, audiences witness the eponymous hero engage with doctors, lovers, like-minded creative individuals- as well as some personal demons. This Niki is haunted by memories of a father who molested her in the hope of changing his daughter into “one of his mistresses.” Shaped by a fascination for weaponry, and a disdain towards domestic norms, Niki uses her past to push the art to a point of tremendous honesty.

Stylistically, the opening 30 minutes bears a resemblance to another 2024 French-language feature: This Life of Mine (Sophie Fillières). Both projects concern women misunderstood by their families and forced to undergo redemptive treatment to regain self control, but that’s where the similarities end because Niki is the more well rounded of the two, showing the journey of the subject from invalid to born again female. Sallette pulls no punches with the material, detailing the protagonist’s desire to abandon domestic solitude – the painter has a husband she adores, and two young children – for uncertainty and danger. Compared to the country lifestyle, the lead character jumps into a more freewheeling and bohemian counterculture: a terrain where lust is the currency of choice.

Le Bon demonstrates acute fragility as the lead, neccessary for a story that follows sexual abuse after physical altercation. During one sobering moment, Niki’s paramour – a married man – abandons their act of sex when his fingers come across some period blood. Courageous in her defiance, Le Bon lets out a howl of disdain: the workings of a force majeure in human skin. Niki’s dilemma deepens the moment she discovers that her doctor has burned a letter outlining her parent’s incestuous hangups. In time honoured tradition – the film is set between the 1950s and early 1960s – the medical practitioner opts to look away from his patient; allowing her father to save face. Scars that could have been spared are ripped open.

Damien Bonnard co-stars as Jean Tinguely, an adroit sculptor capable of viewing objects beyond their physical potential. Together, the duo share philosophies around art, although his marriage to Eva Aeppli (a birdlike Judith Chemla, delivering some of the script’s wittier zingers) complicates any potential romance. Still he understands and appreciates her intentions in a way her first spouse doesn’t. Mocked at a house party for being nothing more than a “writer’s wife who paints”, Niki swallows her pride, walking into the wild for artful abandon.

Sallette’s actress is excellent, bringing the multitude of personality types – mother, spontaneous thinker, intellectual and gun enthusiast – to the big screen. Niki is complicated, largely because there are so many aspects to think about, but each avenue is explored with tentative care and frisson. When Niki calls her husband in an effort to reconnect with the family, she lets out a river of tears; at the time she presents an interactive installation, Le Bon permits a gleam emerge from her eyes; and tucked into a hospital bed, the central lead looks lonelier than she has ever looked in the movie. It all feels real; Le Bon makes it so.

Despite the subject of mental illness, this French narrative is very funny indeed. Bonding with her infant son, Niki pretends to shoot a dinosaur with a toy pistol. Scared by the presence of a slug on the floor, the boy’s mother blasts it away too. The artist who thrives is the one who is most attune to their inner child. That projection is clear for all to see during this scene.

Niki just premiered in the Un Certain Regard section of the 77th Cannes International Film Festival.