Les chatouilles (2018)

Directed by: Andréa Bescond, Eric Métayer | 98 minutes | drama | Actors: Andréa Bescond, Karin Viard, Clovis Cornillac, Pierre Deladonchamps, Grégory Montel, Carole Frank, Gringe, Ariane Ascaride, Cyrille Mairesse, Léonie Simaga, Bénédicte Cerruti, Marie-Christine Orry, Jade Phan-Gia, Benjamin Dur, Valentin Pinette

Little time to get to know Odette. That characterizes the beginning of ‘Les chatouilles’. An eight-year-old girl has to deal with a violent family friend (Pierre Deladonchamps). The viewer immediately gets to choose that. Then we switch to the adult Odette, played disarmingly by director Andréa Bescond. Odette has difficulty with the serious existence, which she spends both professionally and privately in a daze as a dancer and sex addict chatterbox. This film is strangely lively. The message is rammed in, but something takes you for ‘Les chatouilles’ and the main character. And that is: authenticity.

Whether Odette introduces her umpteenth boyfriend to her parents, a doctor or a pizza delivery boy, or she’s dancing in a commercial for an insurance company, her wish to escape is real. The film has a fast pace, even in the dramatic moments, and that seems to be a conscious choice. Odette rushes through life and so does the film. As a result, the viewer is not really deeply moved, but it is precisely the capacity for creative destruction that is moving. This is an honest film about sexual abuse. Not about the psychological background, but about the direct consequences in the life course of the victim.

Odette is difficult to bind. And that is not a matter of perpetually timid silence, as is often the case. Odette’s status-conscious mother (Karin Viard) is not waiting for her daughter’s eventual outing, and makes that clear. Scenes at the psychologist degenerate because of Odette’s manipulative behavior; flashbacks to childhood and a good casting ground the viewer, who has become static from the high tempo as he is. Then the nagging beginning wasn’t such a bad choice; although ‘Les chatouilles’ will not be to everyone’s taste due to its directness and drama, Bescond makes a good attempt at healing.