A fashion photographer's casting couch becomes a psychological battleground where everyone's performing, but nobody's getting paid.
In the midst of a casting, the manipulative casting director Henri presents a constant stream of faces to Yvan an eccentric and provocative fashion photographer. A young woman named Julie momentarily offers a glimpse of the unseen. She is a paradox of fragility and brutality, of woman and child. Through a variety of circumstances the characters find themselves trapped in a world of lies and manipulation they are all taking part of. For Julie the line between fantasy and reality blurs. However in the casting sessions she finds something that she apparently needs. As all her defenses break down, it reveals what is the deepest and the most hidden in the young girl. A modern portrait of the ego and the human longing for recognition.
Acting
Pom Klementieff before Guardians — raw, unsettling, magnetic
Direction
Knorrn's claustrophobic single-location tension
Production
The casting room as psychological horror set
Director
Lars Knorrn
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Pom Klementieff filmed this during her struggling actress years in Paris — she reportedly drew from actual uncomfortable casting experiences for Julie's raw desperation.
The film emerged from France's early 2010s wave of micro-budget 'industry exposé' cinema, predating #MeToo by years but capturing the same predatory dynamics in creative fields.
US
