Coma

France has quite a few enfants terribles among its film directors and Bertrand Bonello is certainly one of them. Coma is his enigmatic answer to the existential fears that the corona pandemic has confronted us with. The nameless main character played by Louise Labèque (from Bonello's Zombi Child) falls victim to those fears. Banished to her bedroom, the teenage girl digs ever deeper into the rabbit hole of a virtual world where the line with reality blurs beyond recognition. She ends up in a purgatory of morbid obsessions, fantasies and nightmares. From Zoom meetings and a Youtube guru called Patricia Coma to Trump tweets and a stop-motion soap with Barbie dolls (voices of, among others, the late Gaspard Ulliel). As with the controversial Nocturama, Bonello dedicates this 'corona film' to his own daughter and provides the music himself.

"Bertrand Bonello’s Coma might be understood as a fascinating update of David Cronenberg’s body horror classic Videodrome, addressing the corporeal, psychological, and existential crises of our hypermediated age." - Slant Magazine