Queens of Drama is a film that shouldn’t work. It’s awash with walking contradictions: a celebration of Y2K pop culture while also critiquing it, a contrast of harsh mania and bubblegum sweetness, and two lead characters who are polar opposites. However, the end result is a film quite unlike anything else; one that’s hard to categorise or understand, but one that’s wholly worth watching.
Set in a post-futuristic 2055, Queens of Drama flashes back to a half-century earlier to the heyday of talent shows and noughties pop music. We follow Mimi Madamour (Louiza Aura), a contestant on one such show who shoots to fame after winning. She’s secretly in love with an underground punk singer, Billie Kohler (Gio Ventura), but forced to remain closeted by her label and management. The film tracks their whirlwind romance, as Mimi navigates global fame and the relationship drastically changes as a result.
It’s a film whose visuals and direction make it far more engaging and eclectic than that synopsis may sound. The entire thing is framed as a throwback-style YouTube video from Steevyshady (Bilal Hassani), a fanatical fan whose social media presence is built upon rampant criticism and exposure. It’s therefore as much a dissection of toxic fandom and obsession – we see Steevy with Mimi’s name carved into their chest in one distressing scene – with much of Mimi’s story mirroring that of Britney Spears’ high-profile meltdown in 2008.
These themes are incredibly resonant in Queens of Drama, which is testament to the strong direction from Alexis Langlois. Pop music fans will get a lot from its parody of shows like Pop Idol and the almost dreamlike aesthetic that imbues the entire experience. It’s a niche one, but Queens of Drama feels like a grown-up episode of LazyTown, the Icelandic children’s show that also melds feverish, saccharine pacing with a heightened sense of the uncanny. While it makes the film emotionally exhausting, there’s always something whimsical to look at – like a perfume ad that’s somehow even more sexually suggestive.
While the relationship between Mimi and Billie isn’t the most engaging – in fact, the narrative plods along as you’d expect and even wraps up a little too conveniently – it’s everything else around the plot that makes Queens of Drama stand out. I really enjoyed its subtle but purposeful portrayal of how Mimi’s race and politics are whitewashed as she becomes famous, and it doesn’t shy away from how pop stars are instantly manufactured as sex symbols – often to appease the male gaze. In this sense it’s very sharply written by Carlotta Coco, Thomas Colineau, and director Langlois – even though, as mentioned, the narrative beats are fairly rote.
No, Queens of Drama is a film far more interested in its themes and dissection of mid-noughties gender and sexual politics. We see plenty about the violence of publicly outing someone, and how the machinations of the music industry facilitate that, and how the media and public react when the pop stars they idolise aren’t accessible to them 24/7.
Equally, and importantly, the music here is pretty great. Mimi’s star-making hit, ‘Pas touche!‘, has already nestled its way into my brain, and there’s even a song about fisting of all things that manages to come across fairly poignant in the film’s context. Billie’s music as an underground grunge star turned rock icon is less arresting, and her character is underwritten in the latter half compared to Mimi, but this is clearly a film with huge reverence for that era of music.
You have to give Queens of Drama its flowers; there’s nothing else out there that looks like Blade Runner or Cyberpunk 2077 while telling a sexually charged and proudly feminist story. It’s utterly intoxicating, often rather unsettling (especially at the end), and feels like the kind of thing you’d conjure up in the midst of a fever. That all works in its favour: what it lacks in narrative nuance or character building, it makes up for with unique visuals and pointed political statements.
★★★½
Queens of Drama screens at the BFI Flare Festival on March 21 and 26, 2025. Tickets are available here.
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