Link: https://www.theplacebedford.org.uk/shows/selfie_onlinefilm
Available until: 15th May 2021. You can start watching it anytime between now and 15th May, but once you’ve started it, you have to finish watching it within 48 hours.
I think we all know really that social media isn’t necessarily the best idea. It can get you into all sorts of trouble and so many things can go wrong. But sometimes it feels as though there’s no other option than to use social media and when you do finally give in and try it, you realise how addictive it can be.
Selfie is made up of five different stories. They are all connected with lots of characters appearing in more than one story and they are all about social media and the internet and what it can make us do. There are five different writers and each individual story is written by two of them but they all collaborated together to turn the film into one complete story. The film is in French but it has English subtitles.
The first story within the film is Vlog which was written by Julien Sibony and Bertrand Soulier. A little boy called Lucas is seriously ill and his parents create an online vlog to say how he’s doing. Then Lucas has good news from the doctor.
The second story is Le Troll (roman epistolaire) which is written by Helene Lombard and Julien Sibony. It’s about a teacher called Bettina who isn’t interested in social media, the internet or the online celebrities all her colleagues and students are obsessed with. But then she decides to give it a try.
The third story is 2,6/5 (which seems to mean a score of 2.6 out of 5) which is written by Giulio Callegari and Julien Sibony. Florian has seen a girl he really likes on his dating site and he really wants to get to know her better but she only dates guys with a high rating on the site so Florian decides he needs to go on more dates to get his rating up.
The fourth story is Recommande Pour Vous which is by Noe Debre and Julien Sibony. Romain has noticed that the internet keeps showing ‘personalised’ ads for things he isn’t interested in. But then he starts thinking maybe the internet is right and he should be interested.
The final story is Smileaks by Julien Sibony and Bertrand Soulier. Several people have been invited to a wedding but when they arrive they are told there is no internet access. Unless they want to go paddling in the sea.
There are a lot of connections. Quite often you see someone in one story and then they’re in another story too. But mainly they are connected by the feeling of social media and the internet taking over their lives. If they can access the internet, they are too busy going online to pay attention to what’s going on around them. If they can’t access the internet, it’s a big disaster and they don’t know how to cope.
It could be a comedy and maybe there are slight exaggerations of what people are prepared to do but I think it has been written in a really serious way as a sort of warning.
There are lots of different characters to keep track of but there are some really lovely ones, especially Elsa Zylberstein as Bettina and Sebastien Chassagne as Fabrice. They both seem like really nice people, slightly innocent in some ways and that can get them into trouble but they’d never want to hurt anyone.
Blanche Gardin and Maxence Tual are quite sympathetic even though they kind of lose sight of their priorities as Lucas’ parents Stephanie and Fred. Max Boublil is a surprisingly sweet Toon, Fanny Sidney is refreshingly conventional as Emma, and Finnegan Oldfield and Manu Payet do at least keep you interested in Florian and Romain’s stories.
This is a really interesting film which makes some good points
about the negative side of the internet.
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