Kika: Review by Saba Osanadze
Economic Survival as Erotic Tale
Kika starts with emotional urgency but struggles to maintain its depth.
By Saba Osanadze
The main character in Alexe Poukine’s Kika is a social worker fed up with hiding her sexual dissatisfaction with her husband (Thomas Coumans), which leads to her cheating with David (Makita Samba). And yet for Kika (Manon Clavell), one act of infidelity becomes only the starting point of a longer journey.
Tragic events ensue, after which the woman is forced to rebuild her life. Rediscovering her sexuality, she looks for economic stability in the most unexpected place – a love hotel. Clavell accurately navigates this transition, by maintaining a precarious balance between her roles of mother and sex worker.
Set design and cinematography serve as a driving force throughout, especially when the second act opens the door to an utterly different milieu. The visual shift is expressive, as the images move from everyday colors to saturated red undertones. The love hotel is presented as an alternative world, governed by its own rules. As the characters adjust to the drastic change of scenery, it is the script that struggles to catch up with the atmospheric visual style.
The setup recalls Belle de jour, although the difference is that in Buñuel’s film the character played by Catherine Deneuve drowns into the sexual side of her own psyche – and this is self-sufficient. In Kika’s case, the psychological depths she plunges into are never fully explored. Her transition from an ordinary life to the world of sex work is motivated by her economic situation, which would not be a problem if the film stayed within the confines of social analysis, rather than aiming for a psychological one.
Kika has nothing more to offer after the burst of events in the first thirty minutes, leaving the viewer frustrated until the credits roll.
Director: Alexe Poukine
Writer: Alexe Poukine, Thomas van Zuylen
Certificate: n/a
Running Time: 1h 44m
Country: Belgium, France
Year: 2025
©FIPRESCI 2025