Wild Dia­mond – first-look review

Var­i­ous sur­veys report any­thing from half to 86% of Gen Zers would like to pur­sue a career in being an influ­encer, point­ing towards a cul­ture just as scan­dalised by the con­cept of mak­ing a liv­ing from social media as excit­ed by it. Now it appears eas­i­er than ever to mon­e­tise your­self – set up an Insta­gram, YouTube or Tik­Tok, per­fect the chore­og­ra­phy to some hyper pop, post a few fast fash­ion hauls, and wait for the brand deals to come rolling in, right? Plen­ty of social media per­son­al­i­ties will tell you it’s not quite that sim­ple, but it’s easy to see the appeal to young peo­ple, espe­cial­ly post-pan­dem­ic. Why toil away in an air­less office or be ver­bal­ly abused by cus­tomers for min­i­mum wage when you could make bank from the com­fort of your own home?

So goes the thought process of Liane Pigou (Mal­ou Khe­bizi), a 19-year-old from a trou­bled back­ground who takes pride in her appear­ance and strives to be a French Kim Kar­dashi­an. When we first meet her in the south­ern town of Fréjus, she’s being cat-called by a stranger on pub­lic trans­port and responds with a jus­ti­fied amount of anger to his abuse. A lit­tle less right­eous is her income stream of sell­ing shoplift­ed per­fume and lap­top charg­ers, but hey – a girl’s got­ta pay for her lip filler some­how, and Liane already used all the mon­ey she made as a wait­ress to pay for her boob job.

When she’s not babysit­ting her spunky lit­tle sis­ter or argu­ing with her moth­er about the ​“sug­ar dad­dies” she brings home, Liane par­ties with her friends and updates her Insta­gram with new videos and self­ies. She has a small but appre­cia­tive audi­ence, but when she receives a call from a pro­duc­er offer­ing her a chance to appear on the pop­u­lar real­i­ty series ​‘Mir­a­cle Island’, Liane becomes obsessed with the star­dom she sees dan­gling just out of reach. She’s encour­aged to grow her social media fol­low­ing if she wants to get cast on the show, where she will be expect­ed to act up for the cam­eras and poten­tial­ly have sex­u­al rela­tion­ships with the nox­ious male cast mem­bers (who it’s implied are con­sid­er­ably old­er than her). All of this sounds like a dream to Liane, who sees Mir­a­cle Island as her tick­et out of her small town, away from her dead­beat mum and doubt­ing friends.

But there’s a small com­pli­ca­tion in the form of Dino (Idir Azougli), who remem­bers Liane from a fos­ter home they both briefly spent time in. He’s now work­ing for his brother’s dirt­bike busi­ness, and imme­di­ate­ly sets about court­ing Liane, who despite her exter­nal image proves to be quite inse­cure and sus­pi­cious of him. As she waits to hear if she’s been cast in the tele­vi­sion series, Liane is con­sumed by her blos­som­ing social media fame, seem­ing­ly unfazed by the death threats, nudes and strange com­ments she receives. She dis­miss­es her friends’ scep­ti­cism as jeal­ousy and fan­ta­sis­es about how bril­liant her life will be once she’s a star.

It’s a spir­it­ed debut fea­ture from Agathe Riedinger that absolute­ly has its fin­ger on the pulse of present-day pop cul­ture, and Khe­bizi is a for­mi­da­ble pres­ence as the sulk­ing, sul­try Liane, attempt­ing to recre­ate the for­mu­la for suc­cess she’s been study­ing since she first had access to the inter­net. But we’re always kept at a bit of a remove from her, unable to pin down what moti­vates Liane aside from a crush­ing desire to get away from an envi­ron­ment which has brought her so much unhap­pi­ness or to offer any new insights into how exact­ly the pur­suit of star­dom in 2024 is all that dif­fer­ent from the pur­suit of star­dom at any oth­er point in history.

Per­haps the biggest dif­fer­ence now is that social media gives the illu­sion any­one can make it if they put in the hours – but Liane is already young and beau­ti­ful, which have always been the main require­ments for becom­ing famous. Although Riedinger doesn’t sneer at the pur­suit of a social media career, it’s not entire­ly clear what exact­ly she does want to say about it, oth­er than posi­tion­ing influ­encers as the new reli­gious idols (which is not real­ly a nov­el con­cept at this point – there have already been too many riffs on Kim Kar­dashi­an as the Vir­gin Mary).

What comes across most in the film is Liane’s lone­li­ness. Deprived of mater­nal affec­tion and direc­tion­less in life, social media has become a replace­ment for con­nec­tion, bring­ing to mind a quote from Dee Reynolds, a char­ac­ter on It’s Always Sun­ny In Philadel­phia, in the episode ​‘Char­lie Rules The World’. A per­pet­u­al los­er, Dee becomes obsessed with suc­ceed­ing at a mobile game called Tech­poca­lypse. ​“It’s like when I’m doing good in the game, I’m doing good in life,” she explains earnest­ly. Liane would undoubt­ed­ly agree.