French director Bertrand Bonello—best known for his drama films The Pornographer (2001) and Palme d’Or competitors Tiresia (2003) and Saint Laurent (2014)—brought his latest film Coma to the big screen at Berlinale 2022 through the festival’s ‘Encounters’ strand.
★★✰✰✰
Filmed after the height of the pandemic, Coma follows a “Young Girl” (Louise Labeque) as she navigates her way through the mental strain placed upon her in a world where free will is seemingly taken away. With an inability to go outside and see her friends, and a strange lack of people in her house, this young girl is left to suffer in the silence of her own thoughts and the odd Zoom call with her friends.
Coma blends drama and horror to offer a social commentary on numerous issues—including suicidal thoughts, global warming and geopolitics. Whilst on the surface this attempts to tackle issues facing many, particularly through the lockdowns, Bonello’s need to face multiple tricky subjects at once renders the film’s narrative chaotic and its ultimate meaning futile.
Incorporating elements of genre, animation and stop motion, Coma attempts to create a surrealist nightmare that delves into the psyche of its protagonist
Although the young girl is the film’s primary source of contact and we are seemingly encouraged to align with her on an emotional level, Coma’s true star is found within its influencer wannabe Patricia Coma (Julia Faure). As a YouTube star who offers heavily questionable life advice, Coma is our protagonist’s guide throughout the film, giving her a simple game that makes her question her own free will. Coma’s character is not only a source of dark comedy for the audience, but an interesting individual whose layers are peeled back as the narrative progresses. Offering heavily questionable information in the form of life advice, Coma draws the young girl into a dangerous game of life, death and what is in between, offering her a chance to gain back the free will she once had without even realising.
Incorporating elements of genre, animation and stop motion, Coma attempts to create a surrealist nightmare that delves into the psyche of its protagonist. Its ‘dollhouse’ scenes, very much like those in Booksmart, offer comic relief yet maintain undertones of the uncanny and strange horror association with dolls and toys. At times Bonello employs the traits of a soap opera to the films’ narrative, using a laughter track to play on moments of dark humour. These often fail to hit the mark and instead come off as awkward. Coma’s cinematography is impressive and its animation is stunning, however, its horror tropes—such as its forest ‘void’ and journey into the unknown—are lost amongst the intensity of its animated parts.
Mystery is at the heart of the film, yet this often leads to unanswerable questions. Whilst characters like Coma are engaging and quirky, the film fails to answer its own question—do we really have free will? Its central game, which traps our young protagonist into a state of stress and confusion, suggests we don’t—yet this game offers no link to our real-world choices. This question is impossible to answer, so it is no surprise that you are left leaving the cinema with confusion and a lack of satisfaction with what you have watched. Perhaps this was Bonello’s aim all along, yet his strive to create an impressive mixture of styles and media makes Coma an unfulfilling watch, and a film with a frustrating lack of closure.
The Verdict
With its universal themes, Coma feels like it should resonate more than it does. Bertrand Bonello’s feature struggles to maintain its momentum, leaving the latter half of its narrative to pick up the pieces of its earlier discussions. Although the film’s aesthetic is enjoyable, its punch is missing.
Words by Katie Evans
This film screened as part of Berlinale 2022 and you can find all of our coverage of the festival here
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