"Backstage" starts with Lucie(Isild Le Besco), a teenager who lives with her mother(Edith Le Merdy) and younger brother, being ambushed at home by a reality television program which has arranged to have her favorite singer, Lauren(Emmanuelle Seigner), serenade her. Lucie flips out, and not in a good way, barricading
herself in her room, therefore sabotaging the program. While there, Lucie and Lauren have a brief exchange which causes Lucie to bolt to Paris to chase after her idol. Persistent, she tracks down Lauren to her hotel suite where her personal assistant, Juliette(Noemie Lvovsky), assists in opening a door or two..."Backstage" is a deeply unsettling and riveting psychodrama that is anchored by two great performances from its leads, complementing each other perfectly. It starts out with the viciously ugly spectacle of reality television(At first, I thought the ambush was a police raid. Was this intentional?) before moving on to an incisive examination of fame and celebrity. Before the film starts, Lucie was probably just a normal teenager who like others of her age felt that Lauren was singing only to her.(Although most young music fans are probably polytheistic, not monotheistic.) Her meeting with Lauren reinforces this belief, thus unleashing a force that takes her out of her ordinary world and places her in Lauren's. And the singer who was once thrilled to perform for her fans, is now a shadow of her former self, trapped in a hotel suite, and relying on prescription medication to get her through the day which puts a great strain on her symbiotic relationship with her entourage.
February 22, 2008
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