24/05/2024 - CANNES 2024: Marcia Romano and Benoît Sabatier write and direct an eccentric comedy following a father retracing his late daughter’s life, only to discover it was all a lie

Every teen, every young person, has lied to their parents about what they’re doing or what they’ve done, but the real story is something you never want getting out. Unfortunately, the inevitable might just happen if you’re dead — with unexpected results, like in Marcia Romano (César-nominated co-writer of Happening [+see also:
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Raoul (Christophe Paou) goes to Marseille to revisit the life of his recently deceased young-adult daughter, Agnès, by travelling to locations she claims to have frequented. However, he begins to spiral out of control when he learns that everything she told him was a lie, and that her life was instead devoted to partying, doing drugs and playing with her band, Fotogenico. Diving deep into her secret life and developing an obsession with the band, Raoul slowly forms unlikely friendships with Agnès’ friends, including Lala (Roxane Mesquida), Tina (Angèle Metzger) and Brune (Bella Baguena). At the same time, he forms a rivalry with Agnès’ chaotic elderly dealer, Lekooze (John Arnold), on whom Raoul blames the death of his daughter.

Fotogenico boasts a stronger grasp of its style and tone than a huge swathe of other attempts at this sort of difficult-to-achieve form of quirky comedy. Romano and Sabatier’s low-contrast, hyper-saturated Marseille is greasy, grimy and beautiful in its own way, where absurd situations are the norm but realistic enough not to reach the fantastical. The film excels as part-acid trip, part-indie satire, epitomised further by its earworm-y post-punk electronic score by Froid Dub and its spiky, geometric title font. The filmmakers indulge in plenty of crash zooms (with cinematography by Nicolas Eveilleau) for both comedic and dramatic effect, with Marseille their visual playground and Raoul their silly little avatar, just trying to make the best out of a bad situation.

With a haircut and moustache remarkably resemblant of Borat, and perhaps a similar (but very toned down) personality to boot, we come to see Paou’s Raoul (perhaps in his late fifties, but always acting as though he’s 25) as a sort of unforgettable, lovable buffoon. It becomes irresistible to empathise with his plight as we see him, at first, fail to win over Agnès’ cooler-than-thou young adult friends, his clothes stolen repeatedly until he’s stripped down to his bright-red briefs. Although the situations that Raoul lands himself in become a touch repetitive after a while — with a preference for ending up in the bathtub after a night of drinking — his antics never cease to amuse, the implausible hero winning us over as he seeks to rediscover the daughter he never knew. And hey — maybe the real dead daughter is the friends we make along the way.

Fotogenico is a French production by Envie de Tempête, co-produced by Micro Climat. World sales are managed by MPM Premium.