Last updated on June 10, 2025
A film by Alexe Poukine
With: Manon Clavel, Makita Samba, Thomas Coumans, Thierry Hellin, Ethelle Gonzalez Lardued, Suzanne Elbaz, Anaël Snoek, Kadija Leclère, Bernard Blancan
While pregnant with her second child, Kika faces the sudden death of her partner. Totally heartbroken, and broke, she sets her priorities straight : 1. make money fast 2. stay strong. Dirty underwear, dildos and neurotic parents will unexpectedly help
Our rate: *(*)
A hybrid film, told in several stages, which paints a portrait of a young woman at a time in her life when doubts are setting in, fate is looming, and events are about to take her into unknown territory. Alexe Poukine seeks to portray a world she has researched extensively (BDSM), while offering a narrative that, in its introduction, sets us on a false trail, that of a tragicomic social chronicle, as Léonor Serraille did so successfully with Promising Young Woman. This opening introduces us to Kika, a dynamic young woman who is curious and open to new experiences, but also a young woman who has her limits and difficulties and who seems to be struggling against bad luck. After a sudden romance that is abruptly interrupted, Kika will have to fight. Slightly lost, she is overcome by a feeling that is perhaps the main theme of the film: grief, even though she refuses to accept it, continuing to move forward in denial, fascinated by a world she discovers almost by chance, almost by breaking and entering, and which allows her to resist, to survive, while confronting the most repulsive aspect of the practice—Alexe Poukine plays with it with a certain tenderness that is sometimes disarming—BDSM. An object of curiosity, slightly unbalanced (her heart tends to repeat an endless motif, the film’s construction plays on ellipses and sudden absences), the film reveals Manon Clavel, Alexe Poukine‘s assumed double, on whom the film rests (like Laetitia Dosch in Promising Young Woman).
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